September 10, 2011, The Independent, Clare Dwyer Hogg
The trans fats in junk food are responsible for the deaths of around 7,000 people a year in the UK – and teenagers are most at risk. Elsewhere, these toxic substances are banned. So why are they still legal in this country?
When the comedian Micky Flanagan reels out his gag about craving chicken from a local takeaway, he always gets a laugh. Desperate for food, he has to run the gauntlet of teenagers outside. “Teenagers love chicken,” he says, imitating the hunched-up shoulders, …

September 14, 2011, The Atlantic
A recent study from the Maryland School of Public Health has found a simple way to help overcome the health problems caused by antibiotic resistance: stop adding antibiotics to animal feed. The study found that when poultry and beef are produced without these antibiotics, bacterial resistance quickly declines.
Feeding antibiotics to livestock creates an ever-increasing number of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, including many that cause disease in humans. Yet up to now, no one has been able to say how quickly the damage can be undone by ending this …

September 14, 2011, AP, Marilynn Marchione

What’s killing us? For decades, global health leaders have focused on diseases that can spread — AIDS, tuberculosis, new flu bugs. They pushed for vaccines, better treatments and other ways to control germs that were only a plane ride away from seeding outbreaks anywhere in the world.
Now they are turning to a new set of culprits causing what United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calls “a public health emergency in slow motion.” This time, germs aren’t the target: We are, along with our bad habits like …

September 12, 2011,  CMJ
Health organizations are comparing their battle with makers of sugary beverages to the war they once waged with big tobacco. Advocates for healthy living have run educational campaigns and called for marketing regulations and taxes on high-calorie drinks. The beverage industry, meanwhile, has accused some health departments of launching baseless attacks and has even responded in one jurisdiction with a lawsuit.
Health departments in a number of areas — including Chicago, Illinois; Seattle, Washington; and Chatham-Kent, Ontario — have launched public health campaigns that expose the high-calorie count …

Life’s Sweeter with Fewer Sugary Drinks
Start today. Take on the Life’s Sweeter Challenge to limit soda and other sugary drinks in your home, your workplace, and your community.
Help protect our children, our families, our co-workers, and ourselves from the harmful effects of soda consumption, one of the biggest contributors to obesity in America.
Support a realistic goal to reduce consumption of soda and other sugary drinks by more than half to a maximum of 3 per person per week by 2020, a healthy target proposed by the American Heart Association.
Take the …

August 30, 2011, CBS News, David Freeman
Has the time come for school districts across the nation to just say no to sugary drinks?
That’s what some experts are saying in light of new research suggesting that Boston’s controversial ban on sugar-sweetened beverages has succeeded in limiting kids’ consumption of soft drinks and sports beverages – which have been identified as major contributors to the nation’s epidemic of childhood obesity.
A study published in the CDC journal Preventing Chronic Disease shows that high-school students in the city averaged 1.38 servings of sugar-sweetened beverage …

August 30, 2011, Los Angeles Times, Jeanine Stein
Teens love text messages–and those texts may help them lose weight, if they’re done right. A study tested out various types of weight management-themed text messages on overweight teens to see what they liked, finding that they favored positive messages but disliked thoughtful questions.
Overweight and obese teens can be a tough crowd when it comes to weight-loss interventions–many have a tough time adopting more healthful diet and exercise routines. Researchers from the University of Michigan thought tailored text messages might be a good …

August 29, 2011, Jessical Pauline Oglivie, Los Angeles Times
Is severe childhood obesity a life-threatening form of abuse that justifies removing a child from his or her parents?
Doctors, lawyers and child welfare experts have grappled with this question in recent years, and the debate was renewed this summer by a high-profile commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. Dr. David Ludwig, director of the obesity program at Children’s Hospital Boston, and Lindsey Murtagh, a research associate at the Harvard School of Public Health, argued that when children are near …

August 26, 2011, Shari Roan, Los Angeles Times
Weight loss is a complex thing. In fact, the old rule that cutting out or burning 500 calories a day will result in a steady, 1-pound-per-week weight loss doesn’t reflect real people, researchers say.
A new mathematical model from researchers at the National Institutes of Health instead shows that for the typical overweight adult, every 10-calorie-per-day reduction will result in the loss of about 1 pound over three years. Half that loss will occur in the first year. For example, cutting 250 calories a …

Huffington Post, Maria Rodale, August 25, 2011
Our children’s health and our nation’s school food did not change for the worse overnight, but we can’t put the brakes on the damage it is doing fast enough. Read on for my Recipe for Success for school lunches.
A strong school-lunch program eliminates highly processed foods and puts a strong emphasis on fresh whole foods cooked from scratch. But, as you might imagine, choosing fresh, locally grown foods presents schools with all kinds of challenges. Unlike those of 20 or 30 years ago, most …