Reuters, Lynne Peeples, May 28, 2010
If milk does the heart good, it might do the heart better if it comes from dairy cows grazed on grass instead of on feedlots, according to a new study.
Liesbeth A Smit, Ana Baylin, and Hannia Campos.Conjugated linoleic acid in adipose tissue and risk of myocardial infarction AJCN 2010.
Earlier experiments have shown that cows on a diet of fresh grass produce milk with five times as much of an unsaturated fat called conjugated linoleic acid CLA than do cows fed processed grains. Studies in animals …

Washington Post, Melissa Bell, May 27, 2010
The plastic soup can looks as if it’s a single-size meal, a healthful lunch option for one hurried customer. But the nutrition label on the back says otherwise. Gummy fruit snacks show a shower of strawberries on the label, which reads “naturally fruit flavored.” Customers would be hard-pressed to find any strawberries in the ingredient list.

Because of rising obesity rates and a push for more healthy living, many new products in the supermarket claim to be low-fat, immunity-boosting, vitamin-added foods. Some brands have become …

Center for American Progress, By Ellen-Marie Whelan, Lesley Russell, Sonia Sekhar | May 10, 2010
Obese American children and teenagers today are on track to have poor health throughout their adult lives. Overall, this next generation of Americans could be the first to have shorter, less healthy lives than their parents. Childhood obesity rates have more than tripled since 1980, and current data show that almost one-third of children over 2 years of age are already overweight or obese.
Download the full report (pdf)
Download the executive summary (pdf)
Obese children and adolescents are more likely to …

WHEN most people think of hunger in America, the images that leap to mind are of ragged toddlers in Appalachia or rail-thin children in dingy apartments reaching for empty bottles of milk.
But a recent survey found that the most severe hunger-related problems in the nation are in the South Bronx, long one of the country’s capitals ofobesity. Experts say these are not parallel problems persisting in side-by-side neighborhoods, but plagues often seen in the same households, even the same person: the hungriest people in America today, statistically speaking, may well …

Marion Nestle, April 6, 2010
In the latest issue of the American Journal of Public Health, Derek Yach and his colleagues at PepsiCo in Purchase, NY, say yes, it can, in answer to the question they pose in their article, “Can the food industry help tackle the growing global burden of undernutrition?”
If we are to successfully combat global undernutrition, efforts must be sustained by multiple stakeholders from various sectors. We believe that trust is built through industry’s demonstration of practical actions that improve health, and recognition of these actions by governments …

Neville Rigby, April 16, The Guardian
The mere mention of trans fats – an unhealthy by-product in our industrialised diets – leaves many respectable scientists fulminating, food manufacturers shrugging and pleading that they’ve done their best, while responsible government agencies and some of their scientific advisers look the other way while the media headlines shriek about killer fat.

Yet how many of us realise that trans fats turn up in all kinds of funny places – and very frequently in the frying pan at home. Read the labels and wherever they mention …

Time Magazine, TIFFANY O’CALLAGHAN March 25, 2010
If there is any reason for hope among the data on national obesity rates in the U.S. (the numbers should be familiar by now: two-thirds of adults and nearly one-third of children are overweight or obese in the country), it is that they finally seem to be leveling off. According to the most recently published reports by epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), long-term federal obesity data suggest that after decades of ballooning in size, American adults and children may have …

Telegraph, February 17, 2010
Cases of devastating health conditions like heart disease, diabetes and stroke will increase with the nation’s waistlines, it warns.
The latest study is an update of the Government-commissioned Foresight report, released in 2007, and reveals no basis for hope that the obesity crisis is easing.
Although recent figures have suggested that childhood obesity may be levelling off, for adults the picture is “less optimistic”, the report’s authors warn.
Within 10 years, 81 per cent of men aged between 20 and 65, will be either overweight or obese, and 41 per …

In a report that may bolster public policy efforts to get Americans to reduce the amount of salt in their diets, scientists writing in The New England Journal of Medicine conclude that lowering the amount of salt people eat by even a small amount could reduce cases of heart disease, stroke and heart attacks as much as reductions in smoking,obesity and cholesterol levels.
Go to the The New England Journal of Medicine for the full article.
If everyone consumed half a teaspoon less salt per day, there would be between 54,000 and 99,000 fewer heart attacks each year …

New York State has shelved the idea of a tax on sugary sodas and juice drinks. But New York City’s public health officials opened a new front in their struggle against high-calorie beverages on Monday, unveiling an ad campaign that depicts globs of human fat gushing from a soda bottle.
“Are you pouring on the pounds?” asks the ad, which urges viewers to consider water, seltzer or low-fat milk instead, and warns: “Don’t drink yourself fat.”
The ad — which cost about $277,000 to develop over three fiscal years, including money for creative work and focus …