Walter Willett for Newsweek, February 5, 2010
Until last year, the residents of Albert Lea, Minn., were no healthier than any other Americans. Then the city became the first American town to sign on to the AARP/Blue Zones Vitality Project—the brainchild of writer Dan Buettner, whose 2008 book, The Blue Zones, detailed the health habits of the world’s longest-lived people. His goal was to bring the same benefits to middle America—not by forcing people to diet and exercise, but by changing their everyday environments in ways that encourage a healthier lifestyle.
What …

Don Sapatkin, January 31, 2010, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Swati Kapoor, 25, was about to order a double chocolate cake doughnut when she noticed something new on the rack at Dunkin’ Donuts. A tag said 290 calories. In an instant, she switched to a chocolate frosted doughnut (230 calories).
“To prevent obesity,” the skinny medical student explained, munching away at a table in 30th Street Station.
Philadelphia begins phasing in enforcement of its strictest-in-the-nation menu-labeling law tomorrow. This first part, requiring chain restaurants to list calories on food tags and menu boards, is a …

The New York Times, October 6, 2009. Anemona Hartocolis
The study, by several professors at New York University and Yale, tracked customers at four fast-food chains — McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken — in poor neighborhoods of New York City where there are high rates of obesity.
It found that about half the customers noticed the calorie counts, which were prominently posted on menu boards. About 28 percent of those who noticed them said the information had influenced their ordering, and 9 out of 10 of those said they had made healthier …

September 7, 2009, JENNIFER LATSON,  Houston Chronicle
The recession may be thinning our wallets but not our waists. Dietitians say healthy eating could be a casualty of an economy that’s making price tags more persuasive than nutrition labels.
Nationally, obesity levels have increased over the past year, and health experts say the weak economy likely will only add heft to the population.
“For better or for worse, calorie-dense foods tend to be cheaper than more nutritious food,” said Jeff Levi, executive director of the Trust for America’s Health, which co-commissioned the July obesity …

Food Navigator, Jess Halliday, 23 October 2009
Italians are unswayed by healthy messages and images on foods, whereas the Finnish respond to medical pictures and British consumers are more likely to buy foods making even a weak health claim, indicates new research.
The new European health claims regulation governs the format and content of claims made on products in the EU. But the authors of the new study, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Food Quality and Preference, note that food companies can still choose what claims to focus …

by Sanjay Gupta, (Time, June 15, 2009)
Just before you picked up this magazine, you probably made a decision that affected your health. Maybe you bought the pizza instead of the salad. Or are sipping soda instead of water. Perhaps you decided once again to delay the beginning of your long-planned exercise routine. Every day there are hundreds of seemingly trivial decisions that individually may not mean a whole lot but in combination can add or subtract a substantial amount of time to or from our lives. As a doctor, I am …

Five fruits and vegetables a day. Exercise, several times a week at least. No smoking.
Anyone who hasn’t heard the healthy lifestyle message has to be living under a rock. But whether it’s the vegetable-hating inner child or the primal urge to conserve physical energy asserting itself, millions of middle-age Americans are having none of it.
By RONI CARYN RABIN
Published: June 8, 2009, The New York Times
Over the last 20 years, the share of Americans 40 to 74 who eat five fruits and vegetables a day has dropped to 26 percent from …

In its effort to overhaul health care, Congress is planning to give employers sweeping new authority to reward employees for healthy behavior, including better diet, more exercise, weight loss and smoking cessation.
A web of federal rules limits what employers and insurers can do now.
Congress is seriously considering proposals to provide tax credits or other subsidies to employers who offer wellness programs that meet federal criteria. In addition, lawmakers said they would make it easier for employers to use financial rewards or penalties to promote healthy behavior among employees.
Two Democratic senators working on …

Merely thinking about getting a salad instead of french fries can satisfy intentions to eat healthily, ironically making it easier to go ahead and order fries after all, new research shows.
In a series of experiments, researchers found that people were substantially more likely to choose the least-healthy option on a menu, such as a cheese burger or ice cream, when the menu included a single more virtuous option, such as a veggie burger or fruit.
“Because the healthy option is there, it somehow satisfies this healthy eating goal in them and …

Two areas of the brain work together to give some people the self-control to reject unhealthy foods, a new study has found.
California Institute of Technology researchers used MRI to scan the brains of volunteers as they looked at photos of dozens of types of foods and decided which ones they’d like to eat. They found significant differences in the brain activity between people who had self-control in terms of making food choices and those with no self-control.
Previous research has shown that an area of the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) …