Health Points: Wednesday

Posted on September 27, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
"We found that a lot of people have a hard time understanding the label and make mistakes when trying to interpret the label," Rothman said. "This can lead to people grossly overestimating or underestimating how much they are taking in of certain nutrients."
I have a bit of first-hand knowledge of this, as one of my studies involves taking samples from cattle and growing E. coli out of it. In the place pictured, their cattle almost exclusively graze, supplemented with hay and a bit of corn. (Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not even 100% sure that they give *any* corn...) Anyhoo, we've isolated O157 from some of these grass-fed cows. So certainly, diet isn't a cure-all, and it's not necessarily even beneficial as far as carriage of O157 goes, despite the one paper Planck cites.
Limit your child's screen time. The more hours spent sitting in front of the television or computer, the more likely kids are to be overweight or obese. The surprise: Research suggests that sedentary kids are most motivated to get active when television (in limited quantities, of course) is offered as a reward for healthy activity. One tool that may help: TV Allowance, a $99 timer that plugs into either the television or the computer. Both parents and children have a code that must be keyed into the timer to turn on the television or computer. When the time is up, the device turns off.
The experiment by the French National Center for Space Studies is an effort to develop robotic techniques for future surgeries in space, the doctors said. The surgeons will be strapped to the walls of the aircraft as they remove a cyst from a man's forearm in a three-hour operation.
Researchers from the University of Alberta compared fitness levels between the 10,000 step program, and a slightly more intense fitness regime. Not surprisingly they found that "gentle exercise was not enough to get fit."
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Health Points: Wednesday

Posted on September 20, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
And it's not as predictable as you'd think. The survey of 2,500 people found, for example, that opera fans were as likely as other music lovers to try hallucinogenic drugs, and that many hip-hop fans had somewhat conservative views on a wide range of issues.

While other studies of musical taste have focused on broad demographics, "this research, as far as I am aware, is the first time that people have looked at these really specific aspects of people's day-to-day lives," said study author Adrian North, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Leicester.
Nearly 42 percent of the French population older than 15 years has a weight problem, an ObEpi-Roche survey showed on Tuesday. Almost a third is overweight and 12.4 percent is obese.


Despite a notion that the French shun overeating and junk food, obesity is still on the rise, according to the study, which has been conducted every three years since 1997.

The closely watched survey is sponsored by drugs group Roche, which makes weight loss products, but it also mirrors growing concern in France on obesity and reflects other surveys which have shown trends such as rising average clothes sizes.
  • Cooking oil is no friend of this blog. But if you’ve ever wanted to know how many varieties of it there are, head over to Bitter Poison. Make note of differing fat contents.
Less than 10 percent of adults in the US has ever had some type of cosmetic surgery, yet almost twice as many hope to do so at some point in the future, a survey shows.


The results suggest that trends have changed significantly since the 1960s and 1970s when cosmetic surgery was "rarely talked about," Jeff Knezovich, executive vice president of the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery (AACS), which sponsored the survey, told Reuters Health. Today, the topic has become a "dinner table conversation," he said.

"People are becoming more aware of cosmetic surgery and its benefits," Knezovich said, noting that an individual's change in appearance may make them feel better, which can consequently lead to their increased performance.
The article’s strongest advocate for skipping breakfast is researcher Mark Mattson, a neuroscientist at the National Institute on Aging, whose work with rodents has shown it might be healthy to skip meals or occasionally fast.


Mattson’s main point is that skipping breakfast might be OK if you eat carefully the rest of the day.

But how many people do that? Studies show if you skip breakfast, you binge like mad at lunch. Or you stalk around the office, looking for food and eventually find chocolate or cake. Studies have also shown breakfast skippers have nutrient shortfalls and a greater risk of obesity.
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Dealing With Snack Cravings

Posted on September 19, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
You know how it is. Your day started off great. You did your morning exercise, ate a healthy breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but the sun is setting, you’re lounging around the house, and from the depths of your stomach, the snack monster stirs. And he craves cookies, cake, salty food, greasy food—the crappier the better! What do you do? How do you quell the beast?

Dr. Fuhrman acknowledges how difficult cravings can be, it’s easy to succumb, but with the right mindset and preparations you can subdue the beast. In Eat to Live Dr Fuhrman offers up some advice to help you show the monster who’s boss:
Implement strategies to prevent temptation and exposure to sedentary activities or social eating. The most important stimulus-control technique is structuring your environment. This means removing temptation from your home and stocking your cupboards and refrigerator with the proper foods. Eat only at the kitchen table, not while watching television. When you finish dinner, clean up and leave the kitchen area, then brush and floss your teeth, so you are not tempted to return and snack again. Try not to make food the center of your life. Keep active with interests that keep you from thinking about eating.
Now if Dr. Fuhrman’s advice doesn’t strike your fancy. Get a load of these from The Wichita Eagle, they seem destined for success—insert tongue in cheek. I don’t know about the lottery ticket idea, but brushing your teeth sure seems like a good move. Kathy Manweiler reports:
Just breathe: The munchies like to attack when I'm stressed out. Taking slow, deep breaths for five minutes works as a good stall tactic and helps calm me down.

This time-out gives me a chance to try to talk some sense back into my taste buds.

Give extra calories the brush-off: To reduce the risk of late-night snacking, I brush and floss my teeth and use Listerine as soon as I've hit my calorie limit for the day. It's rarely worth it to me to mess up my squeaky-clean teeth with a snack. Besides, no food on Earth tastes good with the aftertaste of Listerine.

Find a payoff: Every now and then, I buy myself a Powerball ticket when I win a battle against the munchies.

Who knows, maybe someday I'll become an instant millionaire just by passing up a plate of nachos.

My odds of hitting that jackpot are one in a gazillion, but even if I never win the lottery, I know that it still pays off to put up a fight against cravings.
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Health Points: Monday

Posted on September 18, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
The number of people sickened by the E. coli outbreak linked to contaminated spinach from California's Salinas Valley has risen to 109 people in 19 states, while officials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they have joined the investigation.

CDC officials said Sunday that they've started an emergency operations center in Atlanta to assist state health agencies with testing for E. coli, which has also been blamed for the death of a 77-year-old woman in Wisconsin. The center is assisting state agencies that can't perform the tests or when a second opinion is needed, agency spokeswoman Lola Russell told the Associated Press.
Why is that our doctors are typically so rushed during visits? Rarely return our phone calls, or have "new policies" that forbid their office workers from faxing patients' subscriptions to pharmacies and other helpful gestures? Because they are trying to do more with less, right?! At least that's what they've been bemoaning for years now, and I believe it.
Unless public health takes urgent measures, one in five children in the United States will be obese by the year 2010, the Institute of Medicine warned in a report.

Currently, one third of American children are obese or at risk of becoming so. The rate of childhood obesity has jumped from 16 percent in 2002, to 17.1 percent in 2004 and will reach 20 percent in four years, the report said.
1. Punahou School (private), Honolulu, HI
2. The Willow School (private), Gladstone, NJ
3. Desert Edge High School (public), Goodyear, AZ
4. East Clayton Elementary (public), Clayton, NC
5. Conserve School (private), Land O’Lakes, WI
The survey of 300,000 adults by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that overall, 60.5 percent of Americans were overweight, 23.9 percent were obese, and 3 percent were extremely obese.


Obesity was as common in men as in women -- 24 percent in both. Among ethnic groups, non-Hispanic blacks had the highest rates, with just under 34 percent of those surveyed considered obese, according to the survey known as the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.
Take the humble spanish peanut. Per 100 grams it contains 50g of fat, 26g of protein, and 16g of carbohydrate (of which 9g is fiber) - and that's just the macro-nutrients. The peanut butter process involves roasting the nut, stripping the outer skin, and grinding the nut into a paste.


Over the years food manufacturers have added sugar to appease our sweet tooth, they've added salt, and they've added various kinds of stabilizers to get that creamy texture. Eventually we end up with products like Skippy® Reduced Fat Creamy - a complete oxymoron because peanuts are all about fats and protein.
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A Different Take On Childhood Obesity

Posted on September 14, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
Diet-Blog kicked up a nice discussion about a recent story in The Australian-The Nation. In the piece Tim Olds, an associate professor of the University of South Australia’s Health Sciences School, blames the drop off in exercise as the reason why children are getting fatter and not increased consumption of junk foods. In fact, he believes kids are now eating less fat. Michelle Wiese Bockmann reports:
Dr Olds said he had reviewed 1700 published studies around the world researching children's diets over 30 years.

He discovered the data showed "a clear drop" in the energy intake of children today compared with up to 30 years ago.

He said he was shocked to find that even allowing for under-reporting of food eaten, children aged up to 20 today were eating less, not more - including less fat.

"I think it is the 'energy-out' side of the equation that's been affected," Dr Olds said. "No matter which way you turn the data, kids are eating less than they used to."

Two-year-olds in Australia ate 16 per cent less than a decade ago, while the energy intake of 11-year-olds was down 5.6per cent over the same period.

The inquiry into fast foods and obesity has previously heard that higher calorie intake, not less exercise, is the "main determination of weight gain in children".
The comments on Diet-Blog are really rolling. Check it out:
Leanne
“All my observations (watching people eat, watching people feed kids, watching sales figures of snacks, watching what people buy at supermarkets) tell me the exact opposite - people of *all ages* (especially children) are eating more and more. Not only more calories, but bigger portions, and more often. They're underestimating the size of their meals and the calorie content, and 'forgetting' to write things down when they are asked to keep food diaries.”

Spectra
“A lot of kids don't eat real breakfasts anymore either. That could be a problem, as kids will eat candy, pop tarts, soda, juice, etc. for breakfast and even though a candy bar may have fewer calories than bacon and eggs, it also has no nutrients and your body just feels hungry again later. Pair that with the fact that most parents do indeed feed their kids all kinds of processed crap...refined carbs, mac and cheese, hot dogs, sugared cereal, candy, juice boxes, etc. and you can see why kids are getting more obese. Not to mention that kids are supposed to be energy machines. I was a very active kid and my parents encouraged it...I was told to bike outside, jump rope, etc. to "wear myself out". Most kids nowadays just sit in front of their Xbox and computers and don't exercise much at all.”
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McDonalds Tackles Obesity

Posted on September 14, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
As odd and as contradictory as it may seem, apparently the McDonalds Corporation has donated $2 million dollars to fund obesity research. Nichola Groom of Reuters reports:
The world's biggest fast-food company is donating $2 million to the La Jolla, California-based Scripps Institute, the first time it has ever directly funded scientific research, said President and Chief Operating Officer Ralph Alvarez.


"Everything that we keep on seeing is the whole issue of childhood obesity and the early onset of Type 2 diabetes has grown exponentially," Alvarez said in an interview on Tuesday. "We felt we needed to get greater education in this area."
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Health Points: Monday

Posted on September 11, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
The two-year project will investigate the effectiveness of using the Koi herpesvirus as a way to control strains of carp present in Australia and will examine whether the virus will have any impact on certain native fauna.

"The virus works by attacking the carp's gills as well as other vital organs and eventually killing its host," Crane said. "Koi herpesvirus is attractive as a biological control agent as overseas studies suggest that it has a very limited host range, infecting only carp."
Cut each fruit in half and rap it on the counter to loosen the seeds. Remove all of the seeds and none of pith. Juice the seeds using an orange juicer, or the word on the street is a potato ricer will do the trick nicely as well. Transfer the juice to a non-reactive saucepan and simmer over medium heat until the juice thickens to the consistency of a syrup. You can expect somewhere between a tablespoon or two of molasses from each pomegranate.
  • Behold, the Korean pine nut! Ahmad Pathoni of Reuters explains an extract from this nut may be used to suppress appetite in the obese:
"We have a lot of new drugs that are in the pipeline and this is very encouraging," said Denise E. Bruner, an obesity expert from the United States.


She said U.S. research showed that pinolenic acid extracted from Korean pine nut could dampen the appetite.

"They looked at a group of women who had pine nut versus a group who didn't and they saw there's weight loss and they felt full longer," Bruner told Reuters on the sidelines of an anti-ageing conference in the resort island of Bali.
They promise to help you polish, buff or scrub without worrying about polluting the earth, having an allergic reaction or breathing in the organic chemicals widely used in conventional cleaning products. The makers of "green" cleaning products say they are made with "earth-friendly" ingredients and plant-derived essential oils, and they are touted as having the same cleaning power as conventional products filled with chemicals.

But how can consumers really be sure when they buy these products whether they are organic or not? Right now, natural cleaning products aren't regulated by the government, said Craig Minowa, a spokesman for the Organic Consumers Association, based in Finland, Minn., which promotes food safety and organic farming.
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BMI Not So Good For Asians

Posted on September 7, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
A couple weeks ago Linda Carroll of MSNBC reported on the growing doubt surrounding the Body Mass Index. The BMI is commonly used to determine if a person is of healthy bodyweight, but as Carrol explained it has its problems:
BMI can be way off, especially when it comes to assessing a particular individual. The commonly used measure can give a skewed result not only for fit body builders who come out with a high number because of the extra weight associated with muscle, but also for the elderly, who tend to have scores that underestimate obesity because they have so much less muscle.
In response Dr. Fuhrman provided his method of determining whether or not someone has a healthy bodyweight:
I just take a pinch near the umbilicus and squeeze it lightly between two fingers and measure the distance between the fingers.
Well, we might need to start pinching Asians. Because according to a new report by Malcolm Burgess of AFP the Body Mass Index often misdiagnoses them:
The standard way to define obesity uses the body-mass index -- a measure of weight divided by height -- but weight-related ill health appeared in East and South Asians at a lower cut-off point than in Caucasians, they said.


World Health Organisation guidelines say a BMI of 25 is healthy, more than 25 is overweight and more than 30 obese.

Taiwanese academic Pan Wen-Harn told the 10th International Congress on Obesity in Sydney that such criteria missed a large number of people in Asia.

Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and Indians experienced metabolic risks such as hypertension and diabetes at a much lower threshold, she said.

"You don't have to wait until you get a BMI of over 25 -- even at 23 or 24 a substantial number of people have those diseases," she said.
Burgess cites the spread of the western diet and lifestyle as a reason why Asians are getting heftier:
Indian researcher Naval Vikram agreed that while the westernisation of the Indian diet and less physical exercise contributed to metabolic disorders, most blame lay with genetic make-up.


Indians tended to have high body fat, a low body-mass index, high abdominal fat and a low waist circumference, he said.

They suffered hypertension and lipid problems at a BMI of 22 or 23 -- much lower than other ethic groups, he said.

"If we use international definitions we will be missing about 15 to 20 percent of people whom we would be able to identify with a lower cut-off point. That's a substantially large proportion, taking the population of India," he said.
This story harks at the same issues illustrated in the series of reports by The New York Times investigating the diabetes epidemic in New York City. Here’s an excerpt from N.R. Kleinfield’s report:
One in three children born in the United States five years ago are expected to become diabetic in their lifetimes, according to a projection by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The forecast is even bleaker for Latinos: one in every two.


New York, perhaps more than any other big city, harbors all the ingredients for a continued epidemic. It has large numbers of the poor and obese, who are at higher risk. It has a growing population of Latinos, who get the disease in disproportionate numbers, and of Asians, who can develop it at much lower weights than people of other races.
Fellow New York Times reporter Marc Santora offers up more evidence that the Western way of eating isn’t well-suited for Asians:
Asian children in New York are obese, more than twice the rate among their parents. And they say there is mounting evidence - including soaring diabetes rates in major cities in China, and in other countries with Chinese immigrants - that New York will soon experience a similar explosion as more Asians arrive and have their first encounters with Western ways.


The clash of cultures is vividly apparent in Flushing, one of the city's new Chinatowns. On streets like Roosevelt Avenue, older immigrants still throng traditional Asian markets, with their signs in Chinese, and dine at noodle shops where windows fog with steam. Their children, however, are increasingly lured by fast food. Along a 100-yard strip of storefronts are a McDonald's, a Burger King, a Taco Bell, a Pizza Hut, and a Joe's Best Burger.

Even in China, the number of obese people has tripled since 1992 to 90 million, as Western food has become popular and prosperity has made it possible to eat more. The World Health Organization has warned that Asia faces a "tsunami" of diabetes in the coming decade, and health officials have assailed the Chinese government for its tepid response to the crisis.
It really seems like the problem extends beyond the shortcomings of the BMI. In Eat to Live Dr. Fuhrman explains Asians, in particular the Chinese who traditionally eat a very healthy plant-based diet, are biologically reeling from the effects of the Western lifestyle:
The Chinese [living in China], who on the average consume more calories, are thinner than Americans.1 In China the calorie intake per kilogram of body weight is 30 percent higher than in the United States. The Chinese eat about 270 more calories per day than Americans, yet they are invariably thin. Exercise cannot fully explain this difference, as researchers discovered the same thing with Chinese office workers as well.


This may be because calories from carbohydrates are not as likely to increase body fat as the same number of calories from high-fat foods such as oils and meats, which make up such a high proportion of the American diet. The data suggests that when a very low fat diet is consumed (15 percent average dietary fat in rural China), as compared to the typical Western diet (30-45 percent of calories from fat), more calories are burned to convert carbohydrate in fat, so the body cannot store fat easily.

The modern American diet receives about 37 percent of its calories from fat, with lots of sugar and refined carbohydrates. The combination of high fat and high sugar is a metabolic disaster that causes weight gain, independent of the number of calories.
Continue Reading...
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Video: Techniques for Parents to Inspire Healthy Eating

Posted on September 7, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
Here’s a video from Montefiore Medical Center talking about how to get kids to eat better, i.e. more fruits and veggies. One of the experts they interview is William H. Dietz MD, PhD who advises parents to take charge of what their children are eating. If the child doesn’t want to eat the healthy food presented by parents, then that's OK, they don't have to eat it, but they don't get to have anything else. Hunger, he points out, is a powerful motivator. Dr. Fuhrman recommends a very similar approach to avoiding the food wars between parents and children. (For more on this check out what Dr. Fuhrman has to say in this podcast episode Dr. Fuhrman on Getting Children to Eat Well).

Dr. Dietz also touches on the importance of breastfeeding, describing its role in preventing childhood obesity and making kids more willing to try different foods.
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A Global Ban On Junk-Food?

Posted on September 6, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
Yesterday’s post The Obesity Pandemic explained that obesity is now a worldwide crisis, and according to the AP report the number of overweight and obese people is tremendous:
The World Health Organization says more than 1 billion adults are overweight and 300 million of them are obese, putting them at much higher risk of diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure, stroke and some forms of cancer.
The health complications of obesity are real. In last week’s post The Obesity-Disease Connection we learned the health risks associated with obesity aren’t limited to these five. From Dr. Fuhrman’s book Eat to Live:

Health Complications of Obesity
  • Increased overall premature mortality
  • Adult onset diabetes
  • Hypertension
  • Degenerative arthritis
  • Coronary artery disease
  • Cancer
  • Lipid disorders
  • Obstructive sleep apnea
  • Gallstones
  • Fatty infiltration of the liver
  • Restrictive lung disease
  • Gastrointestinal disease
People’s worries about obesity are especially strong when it involves children. Given kids’ impressionable minds, many people are calling for measures to protect kids from obesity-promoting junk-food. Malcolm Burgess of the AFP reports:
The WHO says more than a billion people -- nearly one in six of the world's population -- are overweight, outnumbering the 800 million who are under-nourished.


The promotion of energy-dense foods such as confectionery and soft drinks in advertising was pushing children towards unhealthy diets, Hastings said.

Within the European Union, 5 million children were obese and 25,000 had type two diabetes, said the taskforce, which is the advocacy arm of the International Association for the Study of Obesity.

Australian academic Professor Boyd Swinburn said the group's draft guidelines sought to combat the problem from a child-protection perspective, using the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

"At the moment, the need to protect children from commercial exploitation is being largely overlooked by the food and advertising industries," he said.
According to Dr. Fuhrman many people don’t realize the stuff they’re feeding their kids spells disease down the road. More from Eat to Live:
Most Americans are not aware that the diet they feed their children guarantees a high cancer probability down the road.1 They don’t even contemplate that eating fast-food meals may be just as risky (or more so) than letting their children smoke cigarettes.2


You wouldn’t let your children sit around the table smoking cigars and drinking whiskey, because it is not socially acceptable, but it is fine to let them consume cola, fries cooked in trans fat, and a cheeseburger regularly. Many children consume doughnuts, cookies, cupcakes, and candy on a daily basis. It is difficult for parents to understand the insidious, slow destruction of their child’s genetic potential and the foundation for serious illness that is being built by the consumption of these foods.

It would be unrealistic to feel optimistic about the health and well-being of the next generation when there is an unprecedented increase in the average weight of children in this country and record levels of childhood obesity. Most ominous were the results reported by the 1992 Bogalusa Heart Study, which studied autopsies performed on children killed in accidental deaths. The study confirmed the existence of fatty plaques and streaks (the beginning of atherosclerosis) in most children and teenagers!3 These researchers concluded: “The results emphasize the need for preventive cardiology in early life.” I guess “preventive cardiology” is a convoluted term that means eating healthfully.
Continue Reading...
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Health Points: Wednesday

Posted on September 6, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
"They don't have very much money available to pay for their groceries and so they must buy the cheapest food available in order to keep their children fed," Aine Duggan, The Food Bank for New York City's vice president of government relations, told Reuters.

"Unfortunately what that means is they're buying the food that's highest in fat content and calorie content because the cheapest food available tends to be fatty food."
When the meals were large - people underestimated calorie levels by 38%. In smaller meals the calories were underestimated by only 2.9%.


A second part of the study was in the lab - where 40 undergraduate students had to estimate calorie content of 15 sizes of the same fast-food meal. The meal consisted of different amounts of fries, soda, and chicken nuggets.

Once again the larger meals were underestimated by 22.6%.
The cause of the abnormalities is unknown, but scientists suspect a class of waterborne contaminants that can confuse animals' growth and reproductive systems. These pollutants are poorly understood, however, leaving many observers with questions about what the problems in fish mean for the Potomac and the millions of people who take their tap water from it.
No S means:
    -No Sugar
    -No Sweets
    -No Seconds

Except:
    -On days that start with an S.
A staggering 70 percent of emergency workers at Ground Zero developed new or worsening respiratory problems from breathing highly toxic air, according to a grim health study announced yesterday.


Mount Sinai Medical Center doctors - who said the study provides conclusive proof that the WTC site caused illnesses - also found 61 percent of first responders and cleanup workers had no health problems before 9/11 and became ill after working downtown.
  • Now if my doctor used this "Rachel gets fruity" video (possibly not safe for work) instead of a plastic model I’d be more inclined to self-examine. Well, more inclined than usual anyway. Oh, and the plum has lots of phytonutrients. (Via: The Cancer Blog)
Continue Reading...
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The Obesity Pandemic

Posted on September 5, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
The news has had much of potential Bird Flu or a Small Pox Pandemics, but obesity? Now the Associated Press says obesity is crowding out other worldwide health problems like a big person in an airplane seat:
"This insidious, creeping pandemic of obesity is now engulfing the entire world," Paul Zimmet, chairman of the meeting of more than 2,500 experts and health officials, said in a speech opening the weeklong International Congress on Obesity. "It's as big a threat as global warming and bird flu."

The World Health Organization says more than 1 billion adults are overweight and 300 million of them are obese, putting them at much higher risk of diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure, stroke and some forms of cancer.
The article explains that even though wealthy countries are the fattest. Traditionally leaner countries are also adopting unsavory (or in this case savory) habits:
Thailand's Public Health Ministry, for instance, announced Sunday that nearly one in three Thais over age 35 is at risk of obesity-related diseases.

"We are not dealing with a scientific or medical problem. We're dealing with an enormous economic problem that, it is already accepted, is going to overwhelm every medical system in the world," said Dr. Philip James, the British chairman of the International Obesity Task Force.
The allure of unhealthy eating and exercise habits is very tempting and far reaching. Consider the fate of the Crete, as presented in Dr. Fuhrman’s book Eat to Live:
In the 1950s people living in the Mediterranean, especially on the island of Crete, were lean and virtually free of heart disease. Yet over 40 percent of their caloric intake come from fat, primarily olive oil. If we look at the diet they consumed back then, we note that Cretans ate mostly fruits, vegetables, beans and some fish. Saturated fat was less than 6 percent of their total fat intake. True, they ate lots of olive oil, but the rest of their diet was exceptionally healthy. They also worked hard in the fields, walking about nine miles a day, often pushing a plow or working other manual farm equipment.

Today the people of Crete are fat, just like us. They're still eating alot of olive oil, but their consumption of fruits, vegetables, and beans is down. Meat, cheese, and fish are their new staples, and their physical activity level has plummeted. Today, heart disease has skyrocketed and more than half the population of both adults and children in Crete is overweight.1
Continue Reading...
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Off To School, Bring On The Pounds

Posted on September 1, 2006 by Gerald Pugliese
I’ve been through college, I’ve seen the way college kids eat; melted cheese comes to mind, and lots of it. I once witnessed a classmate top a steaming plate of spaghetti with gooey nacho cheese and bacon bits. I swear! If I’m lying I’m crying, and I haven’t shed a tear yet.

If you don’t think eating hot dogs with a side of Lucky Charms (yes, I’ve seen it) is a problem, well, have you ever heard of the “freshman fifteen?” It refers to the notorious fifteen pounds new freshman gain during their first year away at school. I know it, because it happened to me.

And I wasn’t alone. Lots of kids gorge themselves on their new found independence. Natasha Singer of The New York Times takes a look at why students take on these pesky pounds:
“I guess some people go overboard with junk food,” said Nina Marie, 17, a Purchase freshman from Pelham, N.Y., who plans to work out six days a week as a member of the tennis team. “But I already know you shouldn’t eat in your dorm, you don’t snack, and you can’t eat burgers and fries every day,” she added, even as she downed a cheeseburger and fries.


But Ms. Marie had the right idea, some experts said. College should be about making wise choices and developing healthy eating habits.
As the article explains, health experts aren’t ready to take a position on the freshman fifteen:
College weight fluctuation is a relatively new field of study. And because most of the published research on the topic involves only small groups of students on individual campuses, researchers do not know what percentage of the college population experiences weight changes, or even whether such changes are temporary or lead to long-term health consequences, said Daniel J. Hoffman, an assistant professor of nutritional sciences at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J..


Most kids are probably already consuming the fare of the standard American diet (SAD) at home, so why does this desire increase at the collegiate level? Maybe the precursors of the freshman fifteen start long before kids buy the yaffa blocks, shower shoes, and meal plans.
Janet Frankston of the Associated Press explains getting young teenagers to eat fruits and veggies might require a jaw clamp and a plunger:
The 13-year-old girl took a whiff of the steamed carrot, then took a taste.

She shook her head no and took the carrot out of her mouth.

"You just have to adjust your taste buds," her teacher, Towana Wise, told the class of teens. "You're young, and this is the best time to develop good eating habits. It's not going to kill you."

The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey has been trying hands-on nutrition workshops at its summer program for high school students in the Newark area.

And the kids haven't been thrilled. Some wanted to know why they had to have things like broccoli, fruit and milk for lunch.
Teaching kids early on the benefits of a healthy eating sounds like a good idea to me. Hook’em while they’re young! In Disease-Proof Your Child Dr. Fuhrman says teaching children the importance of a nutrient-dense diet is paramount:
The goal is for your children to eat healthfully because they want to, and do so whether their parents are around or not. We need to respect their decisions as they mature and give them leeway to formulate their decision to eat healthfully because they want to. The reasons to do so are compelling. By educating them and being good examples, they will simply follow suit. In the same way, your children should learn to enjoy exercise. If parents exercise and engage in sports for fun and recreation, so will their children.
He also has a whole podcast episode about how to get your children to eat well.
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