Jun 4
Posted by Morten in Nutrition and obesity, Physical Activity | Comments off
Between 27 and 49 percent of people think preventing cancer is impossible or highly unlikely, said Karen Collins, a registered dietitian and a nutrition adviser for the American Institute for Cancer Research.
But, she said, the institute has identified three steps people could take to dramatically affect the chances of developing cancer:
* Eat a mostly plant-based diet.
* Maintain a healthy weight.
* Exercise regularly.
Jun 2
Posted by Morten in School nutrition, Whole grains | Comments off
Jun 2
Posted by Morten in Nutrition and obesity | Comments off
New research suggests that low vitamin D levels in the body are associated with thinking or “cognitive” impairments in older men, but whether vitamin D supplements can help is not yet known.
Jun 2
Posted by Morten in School nutrition | Comments off
On Friday, the First Lady made a visit to Bancroft Elementary School to talk to the students who helped her plant the White House vegetable garden, and she once again stressed the importance of healthy eating. As she has said before, Mrs. Obama told students and parents that she turned to take-out and processed foods during the campaign, and that she “started to see that taking a toll on our health.”
Legislators and USDA officials are slowly starting to talk about school meals as a health initiative.
But if you don’t have a kitchen it is really hard to cook.
When you suggest that people buy rice, pasta, and beans, you presuppose that they have resources for capital investment for future meals: a kitchen, pots, pans, utensils, gas, electricity, a refrigerator, a home with rent paid, the time to cook. Those healthy rice and beans can take hours; another class bias is that poor people’s time is worthless.
Jun 2
Posted by Morten in Nutrition and obesity | Comments off
Caffeine-fueled teens are texting, Web-surfing and gaming for hours into the night, which is affecting their alertness and ability to function during the day, a new study in Pediatrics shows.
Jun 2
Posted by Morten in Food labeling, Food marketing | 1 Comment
Hemi from fooducate.com did a great job formulating a list of 9 urgent items on his wishlist for FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg starting on her first full week in office today. These include:
1. Free packaged foods of “health claims“, which are actually marketing claims, by banning them altogether. A reminder to our readers, “health claims” are a concession that the US lawmaker gave to the powerful food industry lobby in the early 90’s when the Nutrition Education and Labeling Act was being negotiated. The result of that law is the nutrition label as we know it today.
2. Please stop the practice of rounding down to zero. Manufacturers are legally allowed to claim a product has 0 trans fat even if a serving contains 0.49 grams. And since we all know people consume much more than the formal serving size, they can get much more than the 0 trans fat they were expecting.
3. Serving Size – Here are some ridiculous examples – 11 potato chips, 2 Oreo cookies. Come on, even 3 year olds eat more than that in a sitting. The reason serving sizes are so minute is to make them appear less caloric/fat/salty/sweet in the nutrition label. Please help manufacturers give us accurate info.
4. How about a unified front of package label? These labels are supposed to be a quick glance way for a consumer to decide if a product is nutrtious enough ro not. With all the new formats sprouting like mad (NuVal, Smart Choices, Guiding Stars, etc..), consumers are more confused than ever. Why not adopt a system such as UK’s Traffic Lights? Yes, it irritates food manufacturers, but hey, you are supposed to protect us consumers.
May 29
Posted by Morten in Food labeling, Food marketing, Food service, Policy | Comments off
Policy interventions to encourage healthy eating in European member states have included prohibitions on advertising certain foods to children, promotion of fruit and vegetable consumption, nutrition labelling, dialogue with the food industry to improve food product composition, regulation of school meals and public sector canteens to ensure healthy food offerings. To date, these have not been systematically evaluated.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that there is a clear rationale for further government involvement in food choice. Obesity, driven partly by food choice, now accounts for between 5 and 7% of total health care costs in the EU. In addition to its contribution via obesity, poor dietary quality directly contributes to a range of preventable diseases that raise health care costs.” Obesity has been estimated to cost the EU some €70 billion annually through health care costs and lost productivity.
The new 3 year 2.5 million euros European research project, EATWELL, led by the University of Reading, will, for the first time, catalogue these interventions, evaluating what has worked well and why. It will investigate how the public sector can effectively market promising dietary interventions to the population, and what attitudinal barriers may be faced in implementation in the range of countries.
May 28
Posted by Morten in Food service | Comments off
A national sample of 1,277 Australian men and 1,585 women aged 26-36 completed a self-administered questionnaire on demographic and lifestyle factors, a 127 item food frequency questionnaire, usual daily frequency of fruit and vegetable consumption and usual weekly frequency of takeaway food consumption.
After adjusting for confounding variables (age, leisure time physical activity, TV viewing and employment status), consuming takeaway food twice a week or more was associated with a 31% higher prevalence of moderate abdominal obesity in men and a 25% higher prevalence in women.
May 27
Posted by Morten in Environment, Food marketing, Food service, Fruits and vegetables, Nutrition and obesity, Physical Activity, Playgrounds, Policy, School nutrition, Whole grains | Comments off
Dear subscriber,
I just wanted to let you know that I over the past weekend made some major changes to my email and RSS news feeds. From now on all stories are made as posts on my blog at morten.me. Searching and navigating my blog is now much easier. Hope you will enjoy it. Each heading will take you to my blog and from there you can click on ‘Read me” for access to the original information.
Sorry that many old stories will be repeat posted in feeds and mails today. We will soon be back to normal.
All the best
Morten
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