San Fransisco Chronicle, Susanne Leigh, May 24, 2010
Like many midlife adults, Ken Holmes noticed that the toned abs of his 20s had billowed into a fistful of flab. He blamed long drives from his Sunset District home to jobs as a program consultant in Silicon Valley and the East Bay, together with extended workdays spent deskbound tinkering with software. In his childless days, Holmes would have offset these sedentary periods with frequent punishing workouts. But now with two elementary-school-age children, the gym was relegated to the back burner.
Still, Holmes was …

Nutrition Action Healthletter Exposes 9 Caloric Heavyweights
May 24, 2010
WASHINGTON—Would you top a Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pepperoni Pizza with six Taco Bell Crunchy beef Tacos? And then eat the whole thing? Well, pass the Pepto-Bismol, please: The nutrition and food safety watchdogs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest today conferred its Xtreme Eating awards on nine items from seven American restaurant chains.
“One might think that chains like Outback Steakhouse and The Cheesecake Factory might want to lighten up their meals now that calories will be required on …

Reuters, Rachael Myers Lowe,  May 14, 2010
Children whose mothers developed diabetes while pregnant are at increased risk of being overweight by age 11, a new study shows.
The study also found that children born to obese mothers are more likely to have a weight problem than children born to lean mothers.
“The best advice is to get lean and fit before you get pregnant,” Dr. Lois Jovanovic of the Sansum Diabetes Research Institute in Santa Barbara, California, who was not involved in the study, told Reuters Health.
Earlier this week, First Lady Michelle Obama …

The New York Times,  ALESSANDRA STANLEY, May 17, 2010

There are two Americas.

One is a ruling minority of the healthy few who rely on vegetable gardens, personal trainers and spa getaways to stay fit. The other is the majority of Americans, who are overweight or obese, many of whom risk their own form of assisted living — XXXL clothes, mobility scooters and diabetes treatments that can tip over $50,000 a year.
“One Nation, Overweight” is a CNBC documentary on Tuesday that provides a chilling portrait of a health epidemic that endangers all …

The New York Times, Roni Caryn Rabin May 17, 2010
Eating about two and a half airplane snacks’ worth of nuts every day helps lower total cholesterol and “bad” LDL cholesterol, and improves the ratio of total cholesterol to “good” HDL cholesterol, a study reports.
Researchers pooled the results of 25 clinical trials that involved 583 participants over all. The study reported that eating just 2.4 ounces of nuts of any kind was associated with declines of 10.2 milligrams per deciliter in bad cholesterol, a drop of about 7.4 percent, and 10.9 milligrams in …

The Wall Street Journal, May 18, 2010, Ron Winslow
Maybe that juicy steak you ordered isn’t a heart-attack-on-a-plate after all. (But still raises the risk of colon cancer sic.)
A new study from the Harvard School of Public Health suggests that the heart risk long associated with red meat comes mostly from processed varieties such as bacon, sausage, hot dogs and cold cuts—and not from steak, hamburgers and other non-processed cuts.
The finding is surprising because both types of red meat are high in saturated fat, a substance believed to be partly …

NZ Herald, Geoff Cumming, May 8, 2010
Salt may be a hidden killer but as health campaigners call for regulations, the picture keeps shifting. Geoff Cumming sifts through the evidence
Give the food police credit for trying. Knocked back on calls for maximum sugar limits, junk food advertising bans and school tuckshop restrictions, some health experts now want a government clampdown on the amount of salt we eat.
A call by the United States Institute of Medicine for the Obama Administration to impose maximum limits for salt content – and progressively lower them …

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 …

FOR much of 2009, Michael Locascio, an executive at ConAgra Foods, watched with concern as the bad news about high-fructose corn syrup kept coming.

In January, there were studies showing that samples of the sweetener contained the toxic metal mercury. Then came a popular Facebook page that was critical of the syrup. By year-end, there were about a dozen spoofs on YouTube mocking efforts by makers of high-fructose corn syrup to show that science is on their side.
But it was pleading comments like this one, from a devoted ConAgra  customer, …

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 …