Disease Proof

• Popular water bottle maker, Nalgene, will stop using plastic due to the uproar over BPA. Ian Austen of The New York Times reports:

“Based on all available scientific evidence, we continue to believe that Nalgene products containing BPA are safe for their intended use,” Steven Silverman, the general manager of the Nalgene unit, said in a statement. “However, our customers indicated they preferred BPA-free alternatives, and we acted in response to those concerns.”

The National Toxicology Program in the United States released a draft report on Tuesday reporting that some rats that were fed or injected with low doses of the chemical developed precancerous tumors and urinary tract problems and reached puberty early. While the report said the animal tests provided “limited evidence,” it also noted that the “possibility that bisphenol-a may alter human development cannot be dismissed.”

• Looks like this year’s flu vaccine is a dud, apparently this flu season is the worst in four years. More from Steven Reinberg of HealthDay News:

The current U.S. flu season has been the worst in four years, due, in part, to a vaccine that was not a good match for certain circulating strains of flu virus, U.S. health officials said Thursday.

For strains of influenza A (H3N2) -- the most prevalent virus during the 2007-08 season, the vaccine was 58 percent effective. But it was 100 percent ineffective against influenza B infections, leaving an overall vaccine success rate of about 44 percent, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

• The Chicago Tribune found trace amounts of chemicals and drugs—like an ingredient used to make Teflon—in Lake Michigan drinking water. From their report:

The tests do not show that drinking water is unsafe. But they do raise important questions for regulators and city officials aware of growing concerns about potential health effects from long-term exposure to drugs in our drinking water, even at very low levels.

"There are many unknowns," said Dana Kolpin, a researcher at the U.S. Geological Survey who conducted some of the first tests that found pharmaceuticals in municipal water supplies. "On one hand, levels of specific substances are very low and appear to be nothing to worry about. But the question is whether mixtures of many substances could build to a point where there could be some harmful effects."

• Professor Woodpecker aims to make healthy eating fun for kids. EMaxHealth explains:

But the Professor Woodpecker series, the brand new set of children's books from H and T Imaginations Unlimited, Inc., is out to change that. In the first three of the planned six book series -- "Professor Woodpecker's Banana Sandwiches"; "Green Apples, Red Apples, Yellow Apples and More"; and "Professor Woodpecker Loves Cereal" (published by AuthorHouse -- www.authorhouse.com) -- Professor Woodpecker shares invaluable nutritional advice and ideas with children everywhere, and no one is better equipped to share such dietary wisdom than clever and caring Professor Woodpecker.

Authoritative yet fun, educational yet entertaining, Professor Woodpecker serves as a role model and teacher for children and those around them who help make their nutritional decisions, like parents and grandparents. Each book features the wise and witty professor, who -- while carrying on fun activities and conversations -- introduces children to important information regarding wholesome nutrition.

• Julie’s Health Club passes on the news that the Illinois state senate plans to ban trans fat in school lunches. Take a look:

"If the House and Gov. Rod Blagojevich go along, foods cooked with trans fat would be banned starting in July 2009. Such food would be prohibited in school vending machines a year later.

"State Board of Education spokesman Matt Vanover said the ban may not have a big effect on school menus because manufacturers have been shying away from the substance for several years.

"Trans fat is a man-made product that improves the taste and texture of foods, but is known to raise bad cholesterol while attacking good cholesterol. It also contributes to heart disease and diabetes."

• It seems Yoga is gaining popularity among the disabled population. CNN reports:

This is the scene at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Georgia, where students attend weekly adaptive yoga class. Derived from traditional yoga, poses are modified for those with disabilities or health conditions.

Hundreds of miles away, longtime instructor Karen O'Donnell Clarke says the limitations could have a number of sources: multiple sclerosis (which she has), a sports injury, fibromyalgia or even a sedentary lifestyle. Post-surgical conditions, Parkinson's disease, stroke and arthritis may also cause some impairment. "Pretty much if you name a health condition, yoga can help with it," she says.

Physical therapist Sarah Knopf says the class' popularity is due to many patients asking what else they can be doing to strengthen their bodies or overcome a health challenge quicker.

• A new study has determined that Vitamin D can guard against artery disease. Will Dunham of Reuters reports:

Scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York found that people with low levels of vitamin D in their blood experience an increased risk for a condition known as peripheral artery disease, or PAD.

PAD most often reduces blood flow to the legs, causing pain and numbness, impairing the ability to walk and in some cases leading to amputation. It develops when fatty deposits accumulate in the inner linings of artery walls, cutting blood flow and oxygen to the legs, feet, arms and elsewhere.

The researchers based the findings on a U.S. government health survey involving 4,839 adults who had their blood vitamin D levels measured and underwent a screening method for PAD that assesses blood flow to the legs.

• All these new fangled physical video games, like the Wii, are great, but they’re no replacement for actual exercise. That’s Fit has more:

I finally had a chance to use a Wii. After getting over some initial embarrassment, I had an awful lot of fun! I tried the tennis game and, sadly enough, I'm as bad at virtual tennis as I am on an actual tennis court. While the Wii was certainly more active than playing any other video game system, it wasn't nearly the same type of exercise as a real sport.

Both Bev and Bethany have written about the exercise potential in the interactive gaming system before. And, compared to sitting like a lump playing regular video games, the Wii is a great thing. But it doesn't take the place of real exercise. The active games are a great alternative to regular video games. Also, many of the games aren't violence based -- as a parent, I know I appreciate that. They also offer hand-eye coordination benefits. And, for kids (or adults) who aren't active at all, the games may be a stepping stone for developing interest in real sports.

 

Students who ate an adequate amount of fruit, vegetables, protein, fiber and other components of a healthy diet were significantly less likely to fail a literacy test, Dr. Paul J. Veugelers of the University of Alberta in Edmonton and colleagues found.

While a healthy diet is generally assumed to be important for good school performance, there has actually been little research on this topic, Veugelers and his colleagues note. To investigate, they looked at 4,589 fifth-graders participating in the Children's Lifestyle and School-performance Study, 875 (19.1 percent) of whom had failed an elementary literacy assessment.

But, feeding kids healthy food in school costs more, and many schools are feeling the financial pinch. Maria Glod of The Washington Post reports:

Sharp rises in the cost of milk, grain and fresh fruits and vegetables are hitting cafeterias across the country, forcing cash-strapped schools to raise prices or pinch pennies by serving more economical dishes. Some school officials on a mission to help fight childhood obesity say it's becoming harder to fill students' plates with healthful, low-fat foods.

School meal programs across the country are run somewhat like restaurants, relying on federal and state subsidies, and profits from meal and snack sales and catering services, to buy food and pay workers. Rising labor costs, coupled with the recent push for healthier meals — which has meant serving higher-priced foods such as whole-grain breads and fresh vegetables — has squeezed budgets. Soaring food prices make it even harder to break even.

A healthy diet is basically preventative medicine, shouldn’t these schools get extra help for TRYING TO HELP! What do you think?

• A 2-year experiment has determined that schools pushing good nutrition had fewer overweight kids. The Associated Press reports:

The number of children who got fat during the two-year experiment was half the number of kids who got fat in schools that didn't make those efforts.

"It's a really dramatic effect from a public health point of view. That's the good news," said Gary Foster, director of the Center for Obesity Research and Education at Temple University and lead author of the Philadelphia schools study being published today in the April issue of Pediatrics.

The bad news: There were still plenty of new overweight kids in the five schools - over 7 percent of them became overweight compared with the 15 percent in the schools that didn't make changes.

• According to a new study, high levels of estrogen replacement come with high levels of danger. Amanda Gardner of HealthDay News explains:

The study, done with mice, found that lower doses of estrogen were safer, while moderate and high doses increased the risk of kidney and heart problems.

And although the findings were in rodents, they may provide a glimmer of insight for humans as well.

"It brings to our attention the fact that HRT [hormone replacement therapy] is not something we totally have to dismiss," said Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, director of Women and Heart Disease at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. "There might be a way to give this more safely to women."

• They’ll be no more artificial growth hormones in Wal-Mart’s milk. More from Reuters:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc said on Thursday that its private-label Great Value milk is now being sourced only from cows that have not been treated with artificial growth hormones, such as recombinant bovine somatotropin (rbST).

The retailer said its Sam's Club chain also is offering milk selections from suppliers that have pledged not to treat cows with rbST.

• Do you have orthorexia? Julie’s Health Club talks all about it:

People suffering from the addiction—usually those righteous raw foodists, vegetarians and vegans—obsessively check labels, avoid junk food, plan menus and often eat a healthy diet so they can feel "pure." Some even make fun of McDonald's customers.

It gets worse. While an anorexic tries to severely limit calories, an orthorexic might shun foods with artificial ingredients, trans fats or high-fructose corn syrup. Orthorexics also are generally unconcerned about their weight and do not feel fat. Their diet may make them feel virtuous.

• It looks like maternal exercise benefits both mother and infant. Megan Rauscher of Reuters is on it:

Exercise during pregnancy has cardiovascular benefits not just for the mother but for the developing fetus as well, according to research presented Monday at the 121st annual meeting of the American Physiological Society, part of the Experimental Biology 2008 scientific conference.

The results of this pilot study "imply an exciting potential benefit of maternal exercise on fetal cardiac autonomic nervous system regulation," Dr. Linda E. May from Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences in Kansas City, Missouri told Reuters Health.

The autonomic nervous system controls the body's involuntary activities, such as the beating of the heart, blood pressure, breathing rate, and functions in the internal organs.

• It seems teens with televisions in their bedrooms are likely to develop unhealthy habits. Reuters reports:

Not surprisingly, those with a bedroom TV were more apt to watch it a lot, clocking four to five more hours in front of a television per week, the researchers said. Twice as many of the teens with a bedroom TV were classified as heavy TV watchers -- at least five hours a day -- compared to those without one.

Girls with a bedroom television reported getting less vigorous exercise -- 1.8 hours per week compared to 2.5 hours for girls without a TV. They also ate fewer vegetables, drank more sweetened beverages and ate meals with their family less often, the researchers said.

Boys with a bedroom TV reported having a lower grade point average than boys without one, as well as eating less fruit and having fewer family meals, the researchers said.

• A school in New Zealand no longer wants birthday cakes being brought to school. That’sFit passes it along:

Oteha Valley primary school, north of Auckland, has banned birthday cakes as part of a larger fat crack-down by the area's Ministry of Education.

Here's why cakes are a problem: Oteha Valley has a large number of pupils born in September and October. As a result, there's the potential for up to four cakes to arrive per week in some classes. Parents were starting to believe they were required to provide a cake for their child's birthday. Since this was both untrue and unhealthy, the school has advised parents in a newsletter to stop sending cakes to school.

• Looks like overeating is to blame for insulin weight gain—shocking! Reuters reports:

During the study, the type 1 diabetics gained weight gained an average of 10.3 pounds and type 2 diabetics gained an average of 4.0. The weight gain could not be explained by a slowing of the body's metabolism, decrease in physical activity, or increase in sugar in the urine, leaving the authors to conclude that it was primarily due to overeating.

They also report that accurate assessment of calorie intake was "severely hampered by the underreporting of food intake, with (reported calorie) intakes being insufficient to meet even (the body's lowest) energy requirements."

Given the ever-expanding girth of our nation’s obesity epidemic, there’s been a tremendous push to shape up school cafeteria food. Just get a load of these previous reports:

Keeping Junk-Food Out School...Problems
“The nutrition standards would allow only plain bottled water and eight-ounce servings of fruit juice or plain or flavored low-fat milk with up to 170 calories to be sold in elementary and middle schools. High school students could also buy diet soda or, in places like school gyms, sports drinks. Other drinks with as many as 66 calories per eight ounces could be sold in high schools, but that threshold would drop to 25 calories per eight-ounce serving in five years.”

School Kids Will Eat Well
“While serving better meals does entail higher labor costs, the study found, that's offset by lower costs for more nutritious foods such as fruits and vegetables compared with processed foods. However, many districts need to upgrade their kitchens and train their staff to prepare these foods, the researchers said.”

Salad Bar Schools
“According to San Francisco Unified School District, parents and students have been pushing for more fresh food to be available in school lunches, so a pilot program was initiated in three schools last year. The pilot schools performed so well that 15 new schools will have salad bars available this year. Another 10 campuses are expected to open their own salad bars by the end of the school year.”

Schools vs. Childhood Obesity
“Fast food, television, soft drinks and a sedentary lifestyle are seen as the main culprits of childhood obesity, and schools -- in the absence of action on the part of families -- are beginning to take a stand.”

Free Fruit Fridays
“Australia has its own problems with rising obesity and diabetes, and this fiber-loaded funding is more than just good stuff on Fridays. Premier John Brumby stated the Victorian plan is more comprehensive than a UK free fruit program that resulted in limited impact, per a published study last month in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.”

School Kids Win Better Veggies
"A little boy said, `Anything, anything, I'll even eat broccoli,"' said Connie Duits, the lunch lady. "So that one touched my heart." The children were careful to offer praise as they expressed their concerns.”

Shaping Up School Food
"’The alarming increase in childhood obesity rates has galvanized parents and schools across the nation to find ways to improve children's diets and health, and we hope our report will assist that effort,’ said Virginia A. Stallings, chair of the committee that prepared the report.”

Soda Expelled From Schools
“The deal follows a wave of regulation by school districts and state legislatures to cut back on student consumption of soda amid reports of rising childhood obesity rates. Soda has been a particular target of those fighting obesity because of its caloric content and popularity among children.”

So keeping all this in mind, Emily Sweeney of The Boston Globe takes a look at local schools and sees how they’re ratcheting up their menus. Here’s a bit:

WESTON HIGH SCHOOL
Lunch starts early at Weston High. Every day at 10:15 a.m., the first wave of students swarm into the school's sun-filled cafeteria for their half-hour lunch period. All of the food is cooked in the kitchen, staffed by seven women wearing dark crimson, collared shirts and black aprons. There is a full soup and salad bar, a broad assortment of Celestial Seasonings tea (cinnamon apple, cranberry apple, mint medley, orange and spice, lemon), and a deli where sandwiches are made to order on a variety of breads (multigrain, oat bran, honey oatmeal, and marble rye, to name a few)…

… Students pay $3 for a complete meal. The lunch menu changes every day, and can include a variety of dishes, such as quiche, Asian rice bowls, Normandy vegetables, Parker House rolls, and Cosmic Potatoes (baked potatoes cut into star and moon shapes). On Feb. 29, the featured dessert was "Leap Year cake" - a square piece of fluffy white cake topped with vanilla frosting - and the entree was baked salmon, wild rice, and warm spinach cooked in olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Well, I’m not exactly seeing drastic improvement here—tea, salt, and deli sandwiches—maybe another school is better. What about this one:

EAST BOSTON HIGH SCHOOL
Today, students can choose from five lunches every day. They offer prepackaged Smuckers Uncrustable peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Bagel pizza. Salisbury steak and brown rice. Turkey nuggets. French fries. Fresh tossed salads.

The school's cafeteria staff tries to provide students with home-style cooking. Hall and her team make the salad dressing from scratch, by combining oil, vinegar, sugar, oregano, and garlic. They slice pita bread into triangles, brush them with oil, sprinkle them with oregano and garlic, and bake them in the oven until they are crispy. They prepare other dishes, such as Dominican rice, that often reflect the diverse student body. Sixty percent of East Boston High's enrollment is Hispanic.

Yeah, I’m failing to see the goodness here—pizza bagels, Salisbury steak, and French fries—okay, one last school. Here:

FOXBOROUGH HIGH SCHOOL
The cafeteria at Foxborough High school is staffed by six women, all of whom live in town. The head cook and manager is Nancy Siracusa, a 25-year cafeteria veteran who takes her job seriously, prides herself on the cleanliness of the school kitchen, and doesn't mince her words. "School lunch gets a bad rap," she said, recalling the time she watched a "Dateline" exposé on NBC in which former host Stone Phillips visited school lunchrooms…

…Siracusa and her team cook and serve 600 lunches a day. The meals are served on foam plates and cost $2. They have "Taco Tuesdays" and "Pasta Wednesdays." When the Globe visited March 3, the featured entree consisted of chicken nuggets with dipping sauce, rice pilaf, fresh celery stalks, carrot sticks, broccoli, fresh fruit, and milk. In addition, the staff prepares eight to 10 different hot sandwiches every day including chicken, spicy chicken, hamburgers, and cheeseburgers. They also make miniature, personal pan pizzas.

What the heck! Sure, the carrots, celery, and broccoli are good, but cheeseburgers, personal pan pizzas, and chicken nuggets. Sorry New England schools, you got more work to do!

It seems middle schoolers have got some nasty teeth and soft drinks and sweet juices are to blame. Robert Preidt of HealthDay News reports:

"This study is important, because it confirms our suspicions of the high prevalence of dental erosion in this country and, more importantly, brings awareness to dental practitioners and patients of its prevalence, causes, prevention and treatment," study co-author Bennett T. Amaechi, an associate professor of community dentistry at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, said in a prepared statement.

Amaechi led the San Antonio portion of the study, which also included researchers at Indiana University and the University of California, San Francisco. They looked at 900 middle school students (aged 10 to 14), and found that about 30 percent of them had the condition.

Dental erosion is caused by acids found in many common products, including soft drinks, sports drinks, some fruit juices and herbal teas.

I can still hear my mom saying, “I’m not buying you juices boxes! That’s junk.”

Well, officials want to get junk-food and soft-drinks out of schools, but the road to doing so is not so clear. Kim Severson of The New York Times investigates:

They are optimistic about their chances because there is more public interest than ever in improving school food and because leaders in the food and beverage industry have had a hand in creating the new standards.

But that intense corporate involvement, along with exemptions that would allow sales of chocolate milk, sports drinks and diet soda, has caused a rift among food activists who usually find themselves on the same side of school food battles.

“This pits ideals about what children should eat at school against the political reality of large food corporations insisting their foods be available to children at all times,” said Marion Nestle, a professor at New York University and the author of two recent books on food politics and diet. “The activists want vending machines out of schools completely.” Dr. Nestle has taken no public stand on the measure.

The nutrition standards would allow only plain bottled water and eight-ounce servings of fruit juice or plain or flavored low-fat milk with up to 170 calories to be sold in elementary and middle schools. High school students could also buy diet soda or, in places like school gyms, sports drinks. Other drinks with as many as 66 calories per eight ounces could be sold in high schools, but that threshold would drop to 25 calories per eight-ounce serving in five years.

I’ve got a question—why the heck, is there any corporate involvement here! You can’t trust corporations to have kids’ best interests at heart. One word, McDonald’s.

A new study has determined that school children will eat healthy food. Steve Karnowski of the Associated Press is on it:

When the researchers crunched all the numbers they found that schools serving the healthiest lunches did not see a falloff in demand.

While serving better meals does entail higher labor costs, the study found, that's offset by lower costs for more nutritious foods such as fruits and vegetables compared with processed foods. However, many districts need to upgrade their kitchens and train their staff to prepare these foods, the researchers said.

The study's conclusions rang true for Jean Ronnei, director of nutrition services for St. Paul Public Schools, which serves more than 46,000 meals daily. The district was held up by the authors as a model for others.

Ronnei said the percentage of St. Paul kids eating school lunches has increased in recent years at the same time the district has been offering more fruits and vegetables.

"That doesn't mean we don't have a hot dog on our menu. We do. ... In our case it's a turkey low-fat hot dog," she said.

Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, said she was pleased to see evidence that schools can offer nutritious meals kids will eat without higher costs.

Some San Francisco elementary schools plan on opening salad bars real soon. CBS News reports:

According to San Francisco Unified School District, parents and students have been pushing for more fresh food to be available in school lunches, so a pilot program was initiated in three schools last year. The pilot schools performed so well that 15 new schools will have salad bars available this year. Another 10 campuses are expected to open their own salad bars by the end of the school year.

The salad bar will provide fresh greens, seasonal raw vegetables as well as fresh fruit and whole-grain breads and muffins, according to the district. The salad bar will be offered with the regular hot lunch at no additional charge.

"This is an important addition to our meals," Ed Wilkins, SFUSD director of Student Nutrition Services, said in a statement. "Not only will students have fresh vegetables at every lunch, but also a large variety to choose from."

(via Urban Sprouts)

According to the AFP, educators and health officials are stepping up the fight against fast food. Virginie Montet reports:

Fast food, television, soft drinks and a sedentary lifestyle are seen as the main culprits of childhood obesity, and schools -- in the absence of action on the part of families -- are beginning to take a stand…

…About 1,800 researchers and general practitioners are taking part in a conference on obesity here, exchanging views on how better to combat obesity at the local or state levels.

A recent CDC study shows that the share of school cafeterias offering their students French fries as the only vegetable item on their menus has dropped from 40 percent in 2000 to 18.8 percent in 2006.

The CDC finances anti-obesity school programs in 23 states, and has seen some positive signs begin to emerge.

Sounds a lot like the move against energy drinks—insert battle cry here!

• A new program is getting NYC kids up and running. The AP is on it:

The program, which targets childhood obesity, is in more than 100 New York City schools plus 20 schools in other states and 20 in Cape Town, South Africa, where a non-governmental organization became interested.

The children earn prizes like medals and certificates each time they notch 26 miles — a marathon — and they can track their progress on personal Web pages.

The running club is best known for putting on the New York City Marathon, which draws world-class runners and hobbyists alike on the annual race through the five boroughs. But foundation Executive Director Cliff Sperber said the purpose of the Mighty Milers isn't to raise a new generation of marathoners

• According to Kevin Sack of The New York Times, school food and nutrition is improving. Check it out:

Spurred by the growing crisis in child obesity, the nation’s schools have made “considerable improvements” in nutrition, fitness and health over the last six years, according to a new government survey that found that more schools require physical education and fewer sell French fries.

The survey, which is conducted every six years, shows that more schools than six years ago offer salads and vegetables and that fewer permit bake sales. More states and school districts insist that elementary schools schedule recess and that physical education teachers have at least undergraduate training. More states have enacted policies to prohibit smoking at school and to require courses on pregnancy prevention.

Perhaps most striking, 30 percent of school districts have banned junk food from school vending machines, up from 4 percent in 2000. Schools offering fried potatoes in their cafeterias declined, to 19 percent from 40 percent.

• The FDA is thinking about putting limit-labels on salt. More from Reuters:

The November 29 meeting will consider a request from the Center for Science in the Public Interest to limit salt in processed food and to require additional health information on food labels about salt and sodium content of foods, among other changes.

In 2005, the group petitioned the FDA to reclassify salt as a food additive, rather than its longtime designation as a food "generally recognized as safe."

It has cited the tens of millions of Americans who suffer from high blood pressure. Cutting salt intake can reduce changes of developing and curtail the condition, according to the American Heart Association.

• A new study claims calcium deficiency might be helping fuel the spread of breast cancer. David Douglas of Reuters reports:

"Calcium deficiency, due either to low calcium in the diet or to vitamin D deficiency, is very common in older women, who are also the population at highest risk of breast cancer and breast cancer bone metastases," lead researcher Dr. Colin R. Dunstan pointed out to Reuters Health. Metastasis occurs as cancer progresses and the cells spread from the primary site to attack other areas of the body.

Dunstan of the ANZAC Research Institute in Concord and colleagues conducted dietary studies in a mouse model of breast cancer growth in bone. The results are published in the journal Cancer Research.

The researchers found that after breast cancer tumor was implanted into the animals, the mice that were feed a diet containing only 0.1 percent calcium showed signs of high bone turnover compared with the animals feed a diet with a normal 0.6-percent calcium content.

• Halloween is coming and so is the landslide of candy. So, if you’re thinking about cheating a bit. Get a load of this list of the fattiest candies. ParentDish passes it along:

It's Halloween and you're watching your fat intake. However, you aren't willing to completely sacrifice the chocolately goodness of the holiday. Which of the following is the lowest fat treat to sneak from the kids loot pile?

• Butterfinger bar
• Milky Way bar
• plain M & M's
• Snickers Bar
• Reese's Peanut Butter Cups
• Kit Kat bar

• OrganicAuthority takes a look at community supported agriculture and organic food. Here’s a bit:

If you live in an area where shopping for organic food poses a challenge, don't throw in the all-natural kitchen towel! Many Americans in similar circumstances have found the perfect solution: community supported agriculture, or "CSA." First popular in Japan and Switzerland in the 1960s, the CSA movement has -- pardon the pun -- taken root with a vengeance in the United States, where it is sometimes referred to as "subscription farming."

How, exactly, does a CSA work?

By definition, CSAs are composed of "a community of individuals who pledge support to a farm operation so that the farmland becomes, either legally or spiritually, the community's farm, with the growers and consumers providing mutual support and sharing the risks and benefits of food production," according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

• The ban on a pesticide used to kill apple moths has been lifted in California—somewhat daunting. Juliana Barbassa of the Associated Press reports:

The spraying is aimed at the light brown apple moth, an invasive species from Australia that has infested 12 California counties stretching from north of San Francisco to Los Angeles. The U.S. Department of Agriculture fears that if the moth, which consumes 250 varieties of plants, crosses into the San Joaquin Valley, the infestation could cause up to $2.6 billion in losses.

Hundreds of residents reported feeling short of breath and sharp stomach pains after spraying began. Environmentalists quickly sued, claiming the state never prepared an environmental impact report to ensure the airborne chemical droplets were safe for residents and aquatic life.

In lifting the ban, O'Farrell found the agriculture department's health-monitoring plan adequate to address concerns of residents. The government monitoring program will "accept and investigate" medical complaints after the pesticide is sprayed, the judge wrote.

• Lack of sleep is no good for women’s tickers. Reuters reports:

British researchers found that among more than 10,000 adults who were followed for five years, women who routinely slept for six hours or less were more likely than their well-rested counterparts to develop high blood pressure.

Compared with women who said they typically got seven hours of sleep a night, those who logged in six hours were 42 percent more likely to develop high blood pressure, while those who routinely slept no more than five hours had a 31 percent higher risk.

There was, however, no clear relationship between amount of sleep and blood pressure among men, the study authors report in the journal Hypertension.

Check it out! The Urban Sprouts are on a little fieldtrip. Just look at all the cool stuff:

In one very inspiring project, the garden offers paid internships for students’ adult family members. The family members cultivate a garden plot using traditional methods from their home countries in order to share their techniques with others. Family gardeners from Africa and the Caribbean had sown crops like hibiscus, okra, and squash, not in straight rows, but in curvy beds that spelled out the word L-O-V-E.

This is discouraging. Apparently British school children have stopped eating school lunch since healthier meals were instituted back in 2006. Kim Murphy of The Los Angeles Times has more:

The Pied Piper, it turns out, he was not. In the wake of an Oliver-inspired national program to provide more nutritious food, students have gravitated away from the cafeteria in a majority of the schools surveyed, according to a government report released Wednesday.

The findings back up earlier reports that more than 400,000 children had stopped eating school lunches since the program debuted in September 2006.

Recalcitrant food service workers and angry "meat pie mums" are chortling with I-told-you-sos. But school officials blamed the exodus on poor marketing, minimal menu choices and a lack of consultation with pupils and parents. They signaled their determination to win reluctant junk food fans over to the merits of salad bars and baked chicken.

The call for more nutritious school lunches has been a mantra across much of the developed world, but Britain made the effort mandatory last year. State schools are required to serve meals heavy in fruits, vegetables and oily fish. Candy, potato chips and popcorn are forbidden. Old standards such as chicken nuggets and processed burgers are served no more than twice a month.

I wonder. Could the meat-pie pushing mamas have something to do with this?

• This’ll make you nervous next time the ole kneel acts up. Madeline Vann of HealthDay News reports that knee pain may signal lung cancer. Take a look:

In just under 2 percent of these patients, the mild knee arthritis was accompanied by non-small cell lung cancer. All patients were middle-aged men who had been heavy smokers for most of their lives. Once the cancer tissue was surgically removed, the knee pain cleared up as well.

About 85 percent of all lung cancers are non-small cell lung cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. Unless it is caught early, non-small cell lung cancer is difficult to treat. It spreads to the bones in one in five cases and is well advanced by the time it is diagnosed in half of all cases.

• Crazy CarbWire thinks a free fast food chicken sandwich and a soda is a great idea—can you hear the call of the cuckoo bird? Check it out:

Mmm mmm, this is about as easy a freebie you'll ever see and I encourage you to take advantage of it before 11:59pm on September 29, 2007. But don't wait until the last minute because only one million of these coupons will be distributed and then they are gone…

…Easy peasy and it's FREE FOOD! If you ask for the chicken to be chargrilled without the bun, then they'll give you plenty of greens to wrap it in. And the Diet Coke can be replaced with unsweetened tea if you'd like that better.

• According to Jill Daly of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, state agencies are working diligently to find the cause of the recent salmonella outbreak. Read on:

After the salmonella strain, Salmonella Schwarzengrund, was detected in two dogs in the homes of two of the ill persons, and in unopened bags of dog food produced by Mars Petcare in the Everson plant in Fayette County, the company voluntarily recalled two brands Aug. 21. The plant was closed last week for inspection and cleaning. Officials from the company could not be reached to update the plant's status.

Further investigation of the outbreak is a collaboration between the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, health officials in the affected states and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The break in the case -- tracing human sickness to dog food -- was made by Pennsylvania investigators, led by Dr. Stephen Ostroff, director of the bureau of epidemiology at the state Health Department.

• Urban Sprouts School Gardens passes a long a story describing San Francisco’s commitment to better nutrition. Here’s more:

San Francisco's Mayor Newsom, is supporting better nutrition options at schools with a $500,000 grant to the SFUSD Student Nutrition Services (SNS). What will be done with the money? SNS is planning to install salad bars at 25 SF schools this year, including three schools with Urban Sprouts gardens: June Jordan School for Equity, Excelsior Middle School and Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School.

• A new study has determined that breast cancer is actually more deadly for black women. Marilynn Marchione of the Associated Press is on it:

Researchers for the first time used the National Cancer Data Base, a tumor registry maintained by the American College of Surgeons, to explore these issues, using more than 170,000 cases diagnosed in 1998. Ten percent were in black women.

The study focused on the 95,500 women whose cancers were invasive rather than still confined to a milk duct. About 39 percent of such tumors in black women were estrogen receptor-negative, or ER-negative, compared with 22 percent of those in white women.

Estrogen helps tumors grow. Drugs that block this hormone, like tamoxifen and a newer class of medications called aromatase inhibitors, work against these cancers.

• Swine flu? I’ve heard of bird flu, mad-cow disease, and SARS, but swine flu? Aetiology talks about how swine flu might be staging a comeback, in Ohio. Look:

This characterization of the 1918 pandemic virus (serotype H1N1) as "swine flu" came back to haunt us in 1976, when H1N1 caused the death of a solider at Fort Dix, New Jersey and triggered a mass vaccination campaign here in the U.S. (with its subsequent fallout). Since then, sporadic human cases of swine influenza have been reported, either clincally (such as this one in Iowa earlier this year, or subclinically, as described in this research. Now in Ohio, they're looking to see whether swine flu has again jumped into humans. More after the jump.

• Considering how fat this country is, this is an odd headline. Andrew Martin of The New York Times reports, “Store Chain’s Test Concludes That Nutrition Sells.” Read on:

After analyzing a year’s worth of sales data, Hannaford found that customers tended to buy leaner cuts of meat. Sales of ground beef with stars on their labels increased 7 percent, and sales of chicken that had a star rating rose 5 percent. Sales of ground beef labeled with no stars dropped by 5 percent, while sales of chicken that had a zero-star rating declined 3 percent.

Similarly, sales of whole milk, which received no stars, declined by 4 percent, while sales of fat-free milk (three stars) increased 1 percent.

Sales of fruits and vegetables, however, remained about the same as they did before the ratings were introduced. All fresh produce received stars.

• More great news for flaxseed! The Cancer Blog passes on new research claiming that flaxseed can reduce hot flashes. Check it out:

The frequency of hot flashes among the women decreased 50 percent over six weeks. Flaxseed contains lignans and omega-3 fatty acids. Lignans have weak estrogen characteristics. Dr. Pruthi cautions that this was a pilot study and further study in a large, randomized placebo-controlled study may not turn out such results.

• Not sure what to say about this one, but, get a load—a big load—of China’s newest pop-stars. Brace yourself. Maureen Fan of The Washington Post reports:
  

On stage, however, the four members of a singing group known as Qian Jin Zu He are strong and confident, belting out their signature rap song, "So What If I'm Fat," passing out photographs of themselves and signing autographs.

The lead singer, 26-year-old Xiao Yang, is 375 pounds; the others in the group are between about 200 and 300 pounds. Together, they tour the country, performing at nightclubs, paint factories, garment industry conventions and shopping malls.

Their success has been modest, but given the powerful discrimination against the obese in China, Xiao said her discovery by a talent agent has been "like a tree branch saving me in the water."

Here’s an idea. Want school children to eat more fruit? Give it away for free! The Diabetes Blog explains:

Australia has its own problems with rising obesity and diabetes, and this fiber-loaded funding is more than just good stuff on Fridays. Premier John Brumby stated the Victorian plan is more comprehensive than a UK free fruit program that resulted in limited impact, per a published study last month in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Brumby explained Free Fruit Friday is part of a broader strategy, pairing with other programs such as Go For Your Life, another government program touting healthy eating and physical activity. He believes the effort will create behavioral change. Bold statement. I'll be curious to read the program evaluation results down the line. You can't help but like the idea of kids scooping up free fruits and vegetables in schools. The initiative suggests schools purchase locally -- fresher produce and support of the small farmer.

Well, if Aussie kids are anything like American kids, this should work. People love free stuff. Either way, it sure beats a pen.

When I was in school, I remember wondering if that slop ice-cream scooped onto my plate still had a pulse—yeah, scary. Let’s face it, for many of us, school food is still a painful memory, but what if we didn’t something about? That’s exactly what a group of students at William V. Wright Elementary School in Las Vegas did. They took on the lunch ladies—and won! CNN reports:

"A little boy said, `Anything, anything, I'll even eat broccoli,"' said Connie Duits, the lunch lady. "So that one touched my heart."

The children were careful to offer praise as they expressed their concerns.

"Dear Mrs. Duits, The food is so yummy and yummy. But there are one problem. It is the green beans," wrote Zhong Lei.

"We love the rest but we hate the green beans," wrote Viviann Palacios.

The Las Vegas students undertook the exercise in mini-democracy after the class read a book called "Frindle," in which a boy contemplates organizing a boycott of the cafeteria.

"I asked the kids, 'Is that a respectful way of doing it?"' Christopulos said. "And they said, 'Oh, not at all."'

As a result of the students' campaign, the food service department of the Clark County School District sent staff to the school to see what alternatives they preferred.

With a handful of reporters watching, two dozen students sat down Monday to a veritable salad bar of cooked, frozen and canned vegetables, from baby corn to cherry tomatoes, and filled out a survey.

Because of cost restrictions, the children's only real choices were between canned and frozen green beans, corn, cooked or raw carrots and cooked or cold peas.

Corn and carrots were popular; cooked peas, not so much.

Very encouraging if you ask me! Hey, I just realized, this is basically the opposite of those zany Meat Pie Pushing Mamas.

Summer’s in full swing and the Urban Sprouts are keeping busy:

In case you haven’t heard of Urban Sprouts School Gardens, I’ll let them introduce themselves:

Urban Sprouts is a nonprofit using school gardens to teach youth to grow, harvest, prepare and eat vegetables from the school garden, in order to help youth actively engage in school, eat better and exercise more, and connect with the environment and each other.

Again, I think this is a really-really great thing.

Apparently elementary schools in California are having a tough time with delinquent school lunch debts. So, if the parents won’t pay, the kids will. Instead of a customary school lunch, children with debt get a meesly cheese sandwich. Richard Marosi of The Los Angles Times reports:

They told students with deadbeat parents that they had only one lunch choice: a cheese sandwich.

The sandwich, served on whole wheat bread, came with a clear message: Tell your parents to pay up — or no more pizza and burgers for you.

Cheese sandwiches and other "alternate meals" have been added to menus in school districts across the country as they try to take a bite out of parents' lunch debts…

…Most schools across the country have introduced alternate meals, said Erik Peterson, a spokesman for the School Nutrition Assn., an Alexandria, Va.-based organization for school nutrition professionals.

Orange County's Capistrano Unified School District serves crackers with peanut butter or cheese. The Los Angeles Unified School District gives children half a sandwich and a piece of fruit. Peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches are a common alternate meal, but not a very effective one.

"It seemed to be one of the children's very favorite meals, so that wasn't productive," said Beth Taylor, nutrition director for the Johnston County School District in North Carolina, where such sandwiches were tried. Taylor said switching to vegetable and fruit trays changed everything. Among last week's menu items for students with lunch balances: crunchy cole slaw, fried squash and steamed cabbage. "The outstanding debt has been reduced to nothing," she said.

Now, I don’t think anyone should welsh on a debt, but—at the risk sounding mellow dramatic—should any child suffer for sins of the father? No, the answer is no, always no. Especially when you consider the punishment, cheese slapped in between sliced wheat bread—yuck! I present exhibit A:

Cheese consumption during childhood is a major concern because it takes ten pounds of milk to make one pound of cheese. Besides the bovine growth hormone given to cows, their milk contains estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, prolactin, and other natural cow hormones. Cheese not only is richer in saturated fat, but is a more concentrated source of these hormones. These milk hormones can exert effects on humans.1 The more you drink or eat dairy, the more hormones you get, and cheese consumption magnifies the negative aspects of cow’s milk.

And wheat bread, granted, whole-wheat bread is a step up from white bread, albeit a small one. But look at that picture, does that really look like a rustic whole-grain type wheat bread to you? Looks like white bread with a bad tan to me. In Eat to Live Dr. Fuhrman explains this type of whole wheat bread is bad news:

Whole wheat that is finely ground is absorbed into the bloodstream fairly rapidly and should not be considered as wholesome as more coarsely ground and grittier whole grains. The rapid rise of glucose triggers fat storage hormones.

Here’s what amazes me about all this, in spite of all the school food reforms going around now, schools are willing to throw all that away, punish the child and compromise their health for a couple of bucks. Tell you what Chula Vista, next time you want to serve garbage to some innocent kid give me a call and I’ll pick up the lousy tab.

Not really. But some schools and communities are making positive strides. Take this school in Somerville Massachusetts. These kids were part of a research program that in the end helped them maintain healthy bodyweight, and, actually got the whipper-snappers to eat broccoli. Don’t believe me? Maggie Fox of Reuters reports:

A program that pulled a whole town into helping its children eat better and exercise more helped stop the kids from gaining too much weight, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.

The children of Somerville, Massachusetts gained, on average, just less than a pound (half a kg) less than children who did not take part in the program, the researchers at Tufts University's school of nutrition in Boston found.

And it got them to eat broccoli.

For young children still growing rapidly, this was a significant success, study leader Christina Economos said in a telephone interview.

"All children are gaining weight because they are growing," she said. "We want to prevent weight gain over and above what they need to for development."

They did, Economos and colleagues report in the journal Obesity. Children who were overweight lost weight, or stopped gaining, and those who were lean continued to grow at a healthy rate.

Economos hopes the seeds of life-long healthy habits have been planted in these children.

School food is a hot topic. Everyone wants kids to eat healthier. Well, everyone except for the meat-pie pushing mamas that is. But for those rational minded folks, the Associated Press reports that congress wants better standards for school food. Randolph E. Schmid explains:

Concerned about the rise of obesity in young people, Congress asked the Institute of Medicine to develop a set of standards for foods that would be available in schools.

The Institute responded Wednesday with a two-tier system designed to encourage youngsters to eat more fruit, vegetables and whole grains and to avoid added sugars, salt and saturated fats.

"The alarming increase in childhood obesity rates has galvanized parents and schools across the nation to find ways to improve children's diets and health, and we hope our report will assist that effort," said Virginia A. Stallings, chair of the committee that prepared the report.

Well, I guess pigs learned how to fly. Because according to the Associated Press more and more students are getting hip to healthy eating, and shunning traditional junk food like fries and hamburgers for carrots and apples. Janet Frankston Lorin has more:

As choices on the lunch line change, many children are accepting them, said Martha Conklin, an associate professor at Penn State University who conducts research about school nutrition programs and school food service.

"If you present these healthy offerings to children, they may turn them down the first time, but you can't give up," she said. "Children will adapt. Choice is important, but they can make those selections from healthy offerings."

Pretty encouraging news, but you know the meat-pie-pushing mamas would have a problem with it.

• Not exactly earth-shattering information, but according to Reuters young girls who are overweight face short and long-term health risks:

According to the report of the study published in the Journal of Pediatrics, overweight rates increased through adolescence from 7 to 10 percent in the Caucasian girls and from 17 to 24 percent in African American girls. Girls were 1.6 times more likely to become overweight between 9 and 12 years of age than in later adolescence.

• Nurse Ratched’s Place shares an interesting tale about patient nutrition:

She said she’d skip the wine but would take the cheese. Then she grabbed a handful of cheese cubes off the food platter and stuffed them into her mouth. After she swallowed, she looked at me, smiled, and said she wanted to die if she couldn't eat what she wanted. I called the doctor and my patient was treated for a sharp rise in her blood pressure.

• Jodi Kantor of The New York Times reports on the practice of printing B.M.I.s on children’s report cards:

The problem was the letter Karlind discovered, tucked inside her report card, saying that she had a body mass index in the 80th percentile. The first grader did not know what “index” or “percentile” meant, or that children scoring in the 5th through 85th percentiles are considered normal, while those scoring higher are at risk of being or already overweight.

• BloggingBaby weighs in on getting your kids to eat healthier:

My best advice is to keep the food that you want on hand and keep the types you don't out of the house. Start your children with healthy eating habits as soon as possible. Read labels and make informed choices.

• In case you still believe in magic potions. Shari Roan of The Seattle Times reports on a new “calorie-burning” drink:

The effects of the green-tea drinks go beyond those of caffeine-laden zero-calorie sodas, the manufacturers of Celsius and Enviga say. An antioxidant found in green tea — epigallocatechin gallate, or EGCG — significantly increases metabolism, they say, which boosts the body's ability to burn fat.

• Speaking of drinks, Diet-Blog is all over a report claiming Americans drink too many calories:

Soft drink consumption:

• All Americans: 6.4% of total caloric intake.
• Teenage boys: 10%
• Teenage girls: 9%

• Will an online fitness tracker help people get people exercising? The American Heart Association sure hopes so. More from Jamie Stengle of the Associated Press:

The group hopes its new free Start! program will inspire Americans to follow through on those resolutions to get in shape. With its online fitness and nutrition tracker, participants can enter what they eat each day and how much exercise they get, then get a summary of calories in and calories out.

• Ever heard of the Swine Flu? Sounds like something you order at a bar. Aetiology enlightens us:

The main swine viruses circulating are of serotypes H1N1, H3N2, and H1N2. (The news report doesn't identify the serotype this person was infected with). Some of these viruses are combinations of human, swine, and avian influenza viruses, and swine have previously been implicated in the generation of pandemic influenza viruses due to their ability to serve as a "mixing vessel" for avian and human-type influenza viruses. And since they're so closely related to humans (well, much more closely related than, say, birds, anyway), there is concern that a swine virus (or an avian virus that becomes adapted to mammals by infecting a pig) could enter the human population and wreak havoc. So, in a nutshell, that's one reason why we're so interested in swine influenza, even though "bird flu" has recently been so dominant in the news. And though this news report shows a fairly simple scenario so far, it raises a lot of unanswered questions.

I encourage you to tune into ABC's Good Morning America Thursday morning December 7th  to learn more about "Two Angry Moms," a documentary on school foods. Two Angry Moms is not just a movie, it's a movement! Inspired by the Texas Agricultural Secretary who said it would take 2 million angry moms to change school lunch, filmmaker Amy Kalafa set out to find angry moms who were doing just that. Tune into Good Morning America this Thursday morning to learn more.

The New York Coalition for Healthy School Lunches provided sponsorship for the movie.

Written by Lisa Fuhrman for the September 2006 edition of Healthy Times:

Pack these healthful and tasty natural entrees in your child’s lunch box, and you will be giving them a priceless gift.

Roll-ups and vegetable wraps
Take a whole grain flat bread or tortilla and spread a favorite Fuhrman-style dressing or sauce over half of the round roll-up. Then add a thin layer of chopped or shredded raw veggies such as lettuce, tomato, avocado, onion, red cabbage, and cucumber.

Bananas
Bananas are a school lunch dream. They can be served straight, right in their own protective and fun packaging. They can be sliced or mashed onto whole-grain bread, with nut butter, apple butter, or a prune whip. Try it with raw almond butter or raw cashew butter, as they are more nutritious and healthful than roasted peanut butter. It’s even better if you add some shredded romaine lettuce to the banana-nut sandwich.

Rice-bean burgers
Healthful burgers on whole wheat buns are always accepted as a school lunch, and no other kid can tell it’s not a meat burger. Try a simple burger made with ingredients such as oats, brown rice, lentils, red onions, chopped nuts, nutritional yeast, and egg white, and some ketchup or other spices. There are hundreds of ways to make a great veggie burger.

Fresh Fruit
Few people think of fresh fruit as a main dish for children’s lunches, but fruit can be the centerpiece of the lunch. Children love bags of grapes, cherries, or strawberries. My kids even like shredded raw apple, mixed with raisins, shredded carrots, and shredded lettuce. A little sauce made with raw cashews, orange juice, lemon, and maybe some blood orange vinegar is a hit with the kids.

Nuts and seeds
Throw in a small bag of raw nuts or sunflower seeds. Ask your child if they want some extra to share with friends. My kids’ favorite is macadamia nuts, which I buy in the shell. They taste incredibly fresh and sweet when you crack them yourself, compared to the ones already shelled. I put them in a heavy clear plastic bag and lay them out flat on the floor of the garage or driveway and then hit each nut firmly with a hammer through the bag. Then, after emptying the mix of broken shells and nuts into a plate, I separate out the nuts, discarding the shells. My children love to help pick out (and eat as they go!) the nuts. It gives them something productive to do and helps make lunchtime a pleasure instead of a stressor.

Dried fruits
Dried black figs, hard bread dates, some unsweetened dried papaya or dried persimmon—what kid doesn’t love these natural candies? Make sure your children floss and brush their teeth when they come home from school. Dried fruits can stick between teeth, causing cavities. Dried fruits also can be soaked overnight in juice or nut milks and then used like jam on the side of sandwich or pita with some nut butter. Make sure the dried fruits you get are unfumigated, unsulfured and unsweetened.

Check out Jaffe Brothers Natural Foods for quality dried fruits and nuts.

• Food cravings—aren’t they a pain? I load up on the fruits and veggies regularly, but every once and a while the siren song of peanut M&Ms is too irresistible. So, where do food cravings come from? My guess is hell. But according to Sally Squires of The Washington Post many researchers believe food cravings are rooted in the mind, a result of past experiences with the desired food:

Nor do people crave foods that they have not already tasted. "Think of food cravings as a sensory memory," says psychologist Marcia Pelchat of the Monell Chemical Senses Center, a research organization in Philadelphia. "You remember how good it felt the last time you had that food. You have to have experienced eating it before."

• We’ve all had bad days at work, now, and I can speak from experience on this one, when you work at a hospital bad days can become really bad days in a heartbeat. Fingers And Tubes In Every Orifice just had a really lousy day—try following up a major trauma case with a lawsuit:

Medicine has been too depressing for me lately. I just took care of a guy with life threatening, self-inflicted stab wounds to the neck and chest a few minutes ago. He was arrested during a meth lab bust. He yelled out to the police that he didn't want to go to jail, took a knife, cut his own neck and stabbed himself in the chest. He bagged his internal jugular and put a hole in his ventricle.

• Okay, Batman, Superman, Spiderman, all cool—but the Candy Man? Oh it’s true. An uber-nerd in a Seattle area school is so upset with the school ban on sweets that he has become a candy-slinging superhero. Emily Heffter of The Seattle Times has more:

It was another appearance by Ingraham's mysterious underground candy salesman, a lanky, A- and B-average senior who has been defying the Seattle Public Schools' nutrition and solicitation policies for about a year. The Seattle Times agreed not to identify him, but around Ingraham, most teachers and administrators have looked the other way, anyway. Some buy from him.

• Do we really need another reason not to eat at Burger King? Fast Food News relays the story of a couple police officers who discovered they had been served marijuana atop their burgers. No, I’m not kidding, check it out:

When they were about halfway through their burgers they discovered marijuana on the meat and used a field test kit confirm it. They sought treatment at a hospital while their fellow officers arrested 3 Burger King employees and charged them with possession of marijuana and aggravated battery on an officer, a felony.

• We know America isn’t exactly the healthiest country in the world, but our buddies from across the pond have got some serious problems too. Reuters explains the number of middle-aged British men drinking themselves to death has more than doubled since 1991. Certainly more than a “pint” sized problem:

The number of alcohol-related deaths last year stood at 8,386, compared to 4,144 in 1991. Death rates among middle-aged men more than doubled to 30 per 100,000 of the population.

• Vegan Grandma takes a long look at the lentil. Did you know lentils are one of the world’s oldest cultivated crops? Me neither. Be sure to check out the whole list of lentil factoids:

Lentils are high in protein, cholesterol-lowering soluble fiber, iron, most B vitamins, folate, molybdenum, manganese, phosphorous, copper, thiamin and potassium. The pigment in Beluga black lentils acts like an antioxidant and helps protect against heart disease, and cancer. Cooked lentils have only 230 calories per cup.

• If you read this blog regularly you’ve probably noticed childhood exposure to toxic chemicals is a hot-button issue. So this next piece of news should depress you. The Associated Press reports forty-seven children in China have been diagnosed as having lead poison:

Many of the China's environmental disasters have been blamed on companies which, counting on lax enforcement of regulations, find it easier and cheaper to dump poisons into rivers and the ground instead of treating them.

• If you’ve ever been or known a yo-yo dieter, than take a look at this post over on Diet-Blog. It’s a list of reasons why people get fed up with their diet and quit worrying about what they eat:

You reach a "goal weight" - How did you come by this number? What is an ideal body weight and who decides what is normal?

You decided that you are happy with your appearance.

• Anyone who knows me will tell you, “Gerry likes hard work.” In fact, there are very few things I find more cleansing and satisfying than day’s worth of physical labor. So I was delighted to read that something as mundane as raking the leaves can actually be a good source of exercise. More on this from The Pittsburgh Post Gazette:

Yet what may seem like just another routine odd job around the house is really a vigorous aerobic workout that involves prolonged repetitive motion, twisting, bending, lifting and carrying. Due to the physically strenuous nature of the work, the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons reminds those charged with the task to take proper safety measures to avoid injury.

• Sugar doesn’t get much love from the health and fitness circles—and don’t expect to find any here. Health Check passes on some new research that links sugar consumption to liver problems:

A new study in mice suggests that sugary drinks contribute to liver damage. For the research, German scientists either gave mice sugar-sweetened water or water containing an artificial sweetner. They found that mice with the sugar water ate less but still gained more weight and also suffered from "fatty liver." The problem was worse when a specific type of sugar - fructose - was used. According to Reuters, the scientists concluded: "These data support the hypothesis that high fructose consumption may not only (damage) the liver through over-feeding, but may be" toxic to it.

Last week The New York Times took a look at how students were reacting to recently enacted school food reforms in tri-state area schools. If you remember, some students were encouraged by the new menu offerings, but others were more resistant. Marcelle S. Fischler explains:

“It’s a good idea because obesity and all that is a serious problem,” Max Gold-Landzberg a senior at John Jay High School in Cross River, N.Y. said. He wasn’t enticed, though, by the healthier choices on the hot food line like herb-roasted chicken and stir-fried veggies.

Fischler points out that those students uninterested in the healthier cafeteria food simply brown-bag their lunch. I very passive protest indeed—I mean its not like they had their moms hustling burgers through chain link fences outside the school. That would be crazy, who’d do a thing like that?

The English. You’d expect something more dignified out of our friends from across the pond, but it’s true. According the Sarah Lyall of The New York Times students in England are not accepting school food reforms without a fight, and neither are their parents:

“They shouldn’t be allowed to tell the kids what to eat,” Mrs. Julie Critchlow a parent at Rawmarsh, a high school in south Yorkshire hills, said of the school authorities. “They’re treating them like criminals.”

Mrs. Critchlow has become a notorious figure in Britain. In September she and another mother — alarmed, they said, because their children were going hungry — began selling contraband hamburgers, fries and sandwiches to as many as 50 students a day, passing the food through the school gates.

The mothers closed their business after they were vilified in the national news media as “meat pie mums.” Mrs. Critchlow now feeds her children lunch at home.

Apparently Mrs. Critchlow thinks “meat pies” and “chip butty’s” (a French-fries-and-butter sandwich doused in vinegar) are better nutritional options for children than low-fat pizza and beef curry; two of the new “healthier” menu options Fischler cites in her article.

Few would argue that our nation’s obesity epidemic is not wreaking havoc on public health. In fact, just this month numerous articles hit the wire illustrating the consequences and complications of being obese. Don’t believe me? Check out DiseaseProof's obesity archive for posts like these:

• Obesity and Back Surgery
• More Western Diet Woes
• Health Points: Monday (9/18/06)
• A Global Ban On Junk-Food?
• Health Points: Wednesday (9/06/06)

In many lunchrooms, school food directors have taken up the challenge. French fries are baked, if they haven’t disappeared entirely. Vending machines are being restocked with bottled water and juice instead of Gatorade. Snacks like baked soy and fruit chips are replacing deep-fried potato chips. Soft pretzels are shrinking; frozen-fruit bars fill the Chipwich racks.

Some of the students interviewed in Fischler’s article appear optimistic about the changes, they themselves are cognizant of the obesity epidemic, but others miss their deep-fried goodies or complain that smaller portion sizes aren’t enough to satisfy them—and some avoid the changes altogether by brown-bagging food from home.

Now you have to applaud the efforts of the school system, even though Dr. Fuhrman would hardly call baked chicken nuggets and stir-fried veggies the pinnacle of healthiness, but it sure seems like a step in the right direction. How many of us can recall classmates wolfing down trays of fries five days a week? Heck, I knew kids in college that still did that.

According to Dr. Fuhrman the best way to ensure your children are eating healthfully and getting the proper nutrition, might be to send them to school with a bagged lunch full of nutrient-rich food. He talks about it in this post from a couple of months ago: Packing A Lunch For School

Some children are happy to eat healthfully, but when it comes to school lunch they don’t want to look different from the other kids. Packing fresh fruit and a healthy bread with some nut butter and unsweetened fruit spread can be a quick option. My children love raw cashew nut butter. If using peanut butter, purchase a brand without salt and other additives. My daughters also like to take peeled orange or apple slices with their lunch. We cut the apple into four sections around the core, most of the way through, keeping the apple intact, and then wrap it in silver foil. This way it stays fresh, without discoloration, and they can easily separate it into slices.

• In case you missed it. The hot news of the day is the E. coli breakout traced to bagged spinach. Andrew Bridges of the Associated Press reports:

Food and Drug Administration and state officials don't know the cause of the outbreak, although raw, packaged spinach appears likely. "We're advising people not to eat it," said Dr. David Acheson of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

Eight states were reporting a total of 50 cases of E. coli, Acheson said Thursday.

• Dr. Deborah Serani shares some eye boggling vision testers.

• Wall Street Journal reporter Roger Thurow explains big companies want to feed children Pop-Tarts and Chicken Patties for breakfast:

Long-neglected, school breakfast is becoming a sought-after market for business. At the same time, that business is driving participation in an underused government social program. Earlier this month, Kellogg Co. began selling its own breakfast-in-a-box to schools, which includes cereal, a Pop-Tart or graham crackers, and juice. Tyson Foods Inc. is adapting its popular lunchtime chicken nuggets and patties into smaller sizes for breakfast. Scores of other companies also are pitching breakfast items to schools.

As companies try to cash in on the before-the-bell market, they are fueling a debate about how to best serve hungry children. Nutritionists, trying to combat childhood obesity, say ideally, breakfast offerings should contain fresh fruit and more whole grains. But they also acknowledge that many children come to school hungry, without having eaten any breakfast at all.

• Would you believe this? A doctor who is afraid of needles! Poor UroStream:

My nurse has to chase me around clinic during the fall season, when it happens to be flu shot season... I always try to put it off as long as possible, and my flu shot sits in the fridge for several days, with my name in BIG BOLD letters attached to the syringe. Every morning my nurse asks me if this is the day, and I nervously squeak out a "maybe, but not right now", and the cycle continues until I finally break down and agree to have that thing jabbed into my arm. And everyone who knows me will attest to the fact that I am NO silent complainer...

Anyway, guess what? Flu shot season is just around the corner. One of my nurses has announced that they are now available for this year, and I have reluctantly signed up, once again with great fear and trepidation. Yes, I am a pathetic cowardly creature, but everyone's got a phobia... right?

• According to Lauran Neergaard of the Associated Press the U.S. wants to use DDT to help combat malaria in Africa:

The WHO will say that "indoor residual spraying, including with DDT, has been underutilized, which has hampered international efforts to effectively combat malaria in Africa," said a Bush administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The U.S. government already has decided to pay for DDT and other indoor insecticide use as part of President Bush's $1.2 billion, five-year initiative to control malaria in Africa.

• Retired Doc’s Thoughts weighs in on the FDA recommendation for mixing aspirin and ibuprofen:

Basically the advice is this:

Wait at least 1/2 hour after taking immediate release aspirin before taking ibuprofen. Wait 8 hours after taking 400 mg. of ibuprofen before taking aspirin.

The above advice does not apply to the popular enteric coated aspirin (ECASA) whose absorption is slower and 1/2 hour may not be long enough for aspirin to complete its inhibition of cyclooxygenase.The FDA did not believe there was adequate evidence to make specific recommendations regarding other NSAIDs-other than a general cautionary note.

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 clas