The Washington Times, June 29, 2010
The number of obese Americans is steadily climbing, with obesity rates rising in 28 states in the past year.
According to a report released Tuesday titled “F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future 2010,” 38 states have obesity rates of more than 25 percent, and almost one-third of American children are considered obese.
These results highlight growing awareness of obesity as a national problem. In 1991, no state in the country had obesity rates higher than 20 percent. Now, only one state — Colorado — …

July 1, 2010
In short: Bicycling and brisk walking, but not slow walking (as most people do) is associated with less weight gain in this study by Anne Lusk. This is a major incentive to promote bicycling in cities around the world!
Biking for as little as five minutes a day can help women minimize weight gain as they enter middle age, especially if they’re overweight to begin with, a new study suggests.
The study followed more than 18,000 premenopausal women between the ages of 25 and 42 for 16 years. During that …

New Zealand Herald, Martin Johnston, June 24, 2010 Share
Wiping virtually all branding off cigarette and tobacco packets could prove crucial in turning teenagers off smoking, a New Zealand study indicates.
Australia is the first country to announce a plan to force tobacco into plain packaging with large pictorial health warnings – a move the industry says it will fight. From 2012, the only remnant of branding would be the name of the product, in uniform print. Gone would be the colours and attractive pictures.
“I think it would be hugely powerful for …

The Wall Street Journal, Shirley Wang, June 22, 2010
Americans increasingly view the food they eat as medicine to help lower cholesterol, reduce high blood pressure and control blood sugar. But as with prescribed drugs, the health-improving qualities of foods such as olive oil, nuts and fruit can interact with other medications, causing possible problems.
Pharmacists often warn people not to mix anti-cholesterol drugs known as statins with grapefruit juice. Newer research suggests that other fruit juices, including cranberry and pomegranate, as well as olive oil may also interfere with how …

Telegraph.co.uk Rebecca Smith, June 21, 2010

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) says that unhealthy foods have wreaked a “terrible toll of ill health” on the nation and placed a “substantial” strain on the economy.

For the first time, the organisation publishes landmark guidance on how to prevent the “huge number of unnecessary deaths” from conditions such as heart disease that are linked to the consumption of ready meals and processed food.
It calls for sweeping changes to food production and government policy to encourage lifestyle changes, and to reduce significantly the amount of …

The Huffington Post, June 23, 2010
Taking a bold step forward for public health and well-being, today President Obama announced his “Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition.”
Now if that doesn’t strike you as bold or important, allow us to take you down memory lane for a moment. Remember the old patch you’d get in physical education class back in the day for doing a certain number of push-ups, sit-ups and running a mile in a certain time? Sometimes it felt like you just got it for showing up because the tests seemed so …

Washington Post, Jane Black, June 9, 2010
With the spotlight on childhood obesity, schools across the country are looking for ways to get kids to eat more fruits and vegetables. In New York, the Department of Health decided to do some research. How much, it wondered, would a school need to cut its prices for apples, oranges and bananas to increase sales by 5 percent over a year?
Brian Wansink was called in to play detective. But the director of Cornell’s Food and Brand Lab soon discovered he had been hired to …

The New York Times, Sewell Chan, June 3, 2010
WASHINGTON — Maybe it should have just stuck with Snap, Crackle and Pop.
The Kellogg Company has agreed to advertising restrictions to resolve an investigation into its claims about the health benefits of its Rice Krispies cereal, the Federal Trade Commission said on Thursday.
The agreement expands on a settlement order that Kellogg agreed to last July over similar claims that another cereal, Frosted Mini-Wheats, was “clinically shown to improve kids’ attentiveness by nearly 20 percent.”
The commission acted against Kellogg as public health researchers …

The Wall Street Journal Blog, Katherine Hobson, June 2, 2010
The Associated Press wrote today about employers that are offering their workers financial incentives for losing weight. Too bad they’re unlikely to work, the AP quotes some experts as saying, noting that while cash rewards have been shown to increase smoking quit rates, losing weight is a whole different ballgame. For one thing, you can toss your cigs forever, but food is a necessity.
Still, we were curious about how other strategies that have been used against tobacco might apply to the obesity …

CNN, Saundra Young, June 8, 2010
The Food and Drug Administration is not properly protecting the nation’s food supply and must change it’s approach to food safety in order protect public health, according to a report released today by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), part of the National Academies of Science (NAS).
The report, 18 months in the making, found that outbreaks of foodborne illness will continue unless the FDA changes its management style and adopts a risk-based approach to food safety, moving from a “reactive” system where they address issues on a …