January 29, 2012, Reuters

People trying to lose weight may swear by specific diet plans calling for strict proportions of fat, carbs and protein, but where the calories come from may not matter as much as simply cutting back on them, according to a U.S. study.

Researchers whose results were published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found there were no differences in weight loss or the reduction of fat between four diets with different proportions of fat, carbohydrates and protein.

“The major predictor for weight loss was ‘adherence’. Those participants who adhered better, lost more weight than those who did not,” said George Bray, at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who worked on the study.

Earlier research had found that certain diets — in particular, those with very low carbohydrates — worked better than others, Bray told Reuters Health in an email, but there had been no consensus among scientists.

Bray and his colleagues randomly assigned several hundred overweight or obese people to one of four diets: average protein, low fat and higher carbs; high protein, low fat and higher carbs; average protein, high fat and lower carbs; or high protein, high fat and lower carbs.

Each of the diets was designed to cut 750 calories a day.

After six months and again at two years after starting the diets, researchers checked participants’ weight, fat mass and lean mass.

At six months, people had lost more than 4.1 kg (9 lbs) of fat and close to 2.3 kg (5 lbs) of lean mass, but they regained some of this by the two-year mark…

READ MORE via Calories count, but source doesn’t matter: study | Reuters.

January 29, 2012, CBS news, Bill Whitaker

New federal guidelines aimed at making school lunches more nutritious were announced this past week. It may seem like a welcome trend, but in the Los Angeles school district, many students are calling healthier inedible.

CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker reports that everything inside one L.A. school cafeteria may be nutritious, but few students have anything good to say about L.A.’s health lunch menus.

“It tastes bad. It looks bad. It doesn’t even look like it’s real food,” said Baleria Franco, a student at Hollywood High School.

“The healthier it gets, the more disgusting it is,” said student Kevin Albrecht.

Some can barely describe what “it” is.

“I guess it’s like wheat pasta, but it doesn’t look like pasta,” Franco said.

“It’s called a barbecue ‘sandwich’, but it looks like an imitation Sloppy Joe,” said student Marina Sangit.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. For the past ten years, the Los Angeles school district has been working to overhaul the menu. First to go: canned sodas. Then came the push for fresh fruits and vegetables, which today account for nineteen percent of total spending, up from just two percent in 2005.

Old standbys like corn dogs are out and turkey burgers are in – moves hailed by UCLA nutritionist Wendy Slusser.

“It is common sense to serve a child healthy food,” Slusser said. “The big question is why aren’t we all doing this. And it is because it is a shift, in where we were, and change takes time.”

READ MORE VIA Some call healthy L.A. school lunches inedible – CBS News.

January 17, 2012, Los Angeles Times, Shari Roan

After a 30-year, record-shattering rise, U.S. obesity rates appear to be stabilizing.

New statistics cited in two papers report only a slight uptick since 2005 — leaving public health experts tentatively optimistic that they may be gaining some ground in their efforts to slim down the nation.

Many obesity specialists say the new data, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are a sign that efforts to address the obesity problem — such as placing nutritional information on food packaging and revising school lunch menus — are beginning to have an effect in a country where two-thirds of adults and one-third of children and teens are overweight or obese.

“A good first step is to stop the increase, so I think this is very positive news,” said James O. Hill, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. “It may suggest our efforts are starting to make a difference. The bad news is we still have obesity rates that are just astronomical.”

Historically, there was little change in Americans’ sizes from 1960 through 1980. But obesity rates soared through the end of the century, for reasons that are still debated.

The new studies reflect 2009-10 data, the most recent available, from the government’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which examined 6,000 adults and 4,111 children, measuring their body mass index, among other items. Though a number of organizations measure obesity rates, the survey’s data are considered among the most accurate.

The statistics showed that more than 35% of U.S. adults (78 million people) are obese, defined as having a body mass index of 30 or greater. That is similar to the 2005-06 rate. Calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared, the BMI is not a perfect measure of fatness but is still viewed as the gold standard in assessing population-wide trends.

via Obesity rates in U.S. appear to be finally leveling off – latimes.com.

January 16, 2012, Sean Poultier, DailyMail Online

Nutrition therapists have been condemned as quacks and accused of putting the health of the sick – including those suffering from breast cancer – at risk.

An industry has grown up based on the concept that ‘food doctor’ nutritionists can cure patients’ ills and allergies through diet.
However at least some of the practitioners, who charge up to £80 for a consultation, are providing advice that could harm health, a study by the consumer watchdog Which? found.

Healthy: But nutrition therapists’ recommendations could be harming patients, an undercover investigation by Which? has found
The group sent undercover researchers to pose as patients with a range of problems and visit 15 so-called nutritional therapists.
Which? said: ‘They found shocking examples of advice which could have put patients with real health problems at risk.’

All but one of the 15 offered either potentially dangerous or misleading advice. Six of the consultations were rated as ‘dangerous fails’ in terms of misinformation and bad advice. A further eight were rated as ‘fails’, and just one a ‘borderline pass’.

It said: ‘One researcher, posing as a breast cancer sufferer, was told by her therapist to delay radiotherapy treatment recommended by her oncologist, saying they could rid the body of cancer through diet.
‘The therapist advised her to follow a no-sugar diet for three to six months saying, “Cancer feeds off sugar. By cutting out sugar we have a better chance of the cancer going away.” ’

This was considered highly irresponsible and incorrect by a panel set up by Which? to assess the advice. It included Professor David Colquhoun, an expert in pharmacology at University College London and a GP, Dr Margaret McCartney.

Another researcher was told if the treatment prescribed for his severe tiredness started to make him feel unwell, it showed that it was working. The therapist advised him not to contact his GP as they ‘wouldn’t understand what was happening’.

Bizarre tests, including iridology, which involves examining patterns in the iris, and hair analysis were also used to ‘diagnose’ conditions.
A researcher who said she had been struggling to conceive was told after having her iris examined she had ‘bowel toxicity’ and a ‘leathery bowel’. Both are meaningless terms, the expert panel said.

Which? found the therapists often used these tests as a part of a sales talk to market unnecessary supplements costing up to £70 a month. Very few of the 15 addressed issues that would have had a positive impact on health, such as reducing alcohol intake.

Prof Colquhoun said: ‘Nutritional therapy is plagued by ‘diagnostic tests’ that are little more than quackery. Iridology and hair analysis simply don’t work.’ Dr McCartney said: ‘If you have symptoms see your GP, not someone who can’t diagnose accurately.’

Which? has decided not to name the therapists involved. However, it has reported its findings to the British Association for Applied Nutrition & Nutritional Therapy (BANT), where a number are registered.

BANT declined to comment.

The British Dietetic Association was keen to make clear its trained dietitians are very different from nutrition therapists such as those visited by Which? BDA said: ‘Anybody can set up shop as a nutrition therapist, with no qualifications. Registered dieticians working in the UK are educated to degree level and must be registered with the Health Professions Council.’

Read more via Nutrition therapists condemned as quacks who put patients health at risk | Mail Online.

January 10, 2012, CNN, Health.com, Anne Harding

[...] People tend to overeat in restaurants, but how can people fend off these extra calories? We can stay away from restaurants altogether, of course, but for most of us that’s not a viable — or particularly appealing — option.

A small new study, led by Timmerman and published this week in the Journal of Nutrition and Education Behavior, offers another potential strategy: mindful eating, a series of dining techniques that stress close attention to the enjoyment of eating and feelings of hunger and fullness.

The study included 35 middle-aged women who ate out at least three times per week and ranged in body size from slim to morbidly obese. (Roughly 30% of the women were dieting when they enrolled in the study, and another 23% were actively trying to maintain their weight.) The researchers randomly selected about half of the women to serve as a control group, and assigned the other half to a six-week mindful eating program.

The program consisted of weekly two-hour sessions in which an instructor taught the women how to limit overeating and make healthy food choices in different settings — choosing steamed rice instead of fried in Chinese restaurants, for example, or black beans instead of refried in Mexican restaurants. Then, at the end of each session, the women completed a mindful eating exercise, such as focusing on their feelings of hunger while eating cheese and crackers, or on their sensations of fullness while eating chocolate.

At the end of the program, the women were eating in restaurants (or ordering takeout) just as often as they had before — nearly six times a week, on average. Yet they’d lost an average of 3.75 pounds and were eating about 300 fewer calories per day. (Weight and calorie intake didn’t change in the control group.) What’s more, restaurant meals accounted for just 124 of those daily calories, suggesting that the participants were eating less at home, too.

Susan Albers, Psy.D., a psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic and the author of “Eating Mindfully,” isn’t surprised that changes in eating behavior seemed to carry over from restaurants into the home, since she’s seen a similar transformation after teaching her patients mindful eating techniques.

“Once you’ve learned mindful eating skills, you tend to use them whether you are eating at your own kitchen table or at a five-star restaurant,” she says.

Mindful eating is an offshoot of “mindfulness,” a meditative frame of mind that involves practicing a concentrated, nonjudgmental awareness of one’s body and thoughts. Mindfulness belongs to the Buddhist tradition and has more recently been applied to Western psychology, stress and pain management, and the treatment of depression and anxiety.

When applied to eating, mindfulness is intended to correct Americans’ tendency to eat too fast, often while doing something else at the same time (such as watching TV). Not only do people tend to eat more when they’re not paying attention, but some evidence suggests that we even digest food less effectively.

“In general, we’ve lost the art of savoring food,” says Albers, who did not participate in Timmerman’s study. “We can eat an entire plate of food and not taste one bite. Mindful eating skills teach you how to eat less but enjoy it more.”

Read the entire article at Can mindfulness curb overeating? – CNN.com.

January 9, 2012, Blisstree.com, Deborah Dunham

As the battle to point the finger at someone for our nation’s childhood obesity epidemic continues, one top New York City Department of Health official now says that the free breakfast program in city schools is to blame. It’s what she says is causing poor kids to get fat, but in reality, she couldn’t be more wrong–or more insensitive.

Director of Community Epidemiology, Gretchen Van Wye said the in-class meals that these students receive each morning at certain urban schools is resulting in over 21% of the underprivileged kids eating two breakfasts.

According to a recent study that analyzed the free breakfast program for 2,289 third-, fourth- and fifth-graders in East and Central Harlem, North and Central Brooklyn, and the South Bronx, researchers compared kids who ate the free breakfasts and and found that about one in five were eating breakfast twice. When presenting these findings to her agency co-workers, Van Wye stated:

Special care should be taken to ensure that children are not inadvertently taking in excess calories by eating in multiple locations.

But in direct opposition to that, another health official told the New York Post:

We’d rather have kids be hungry than fat? Horrible! The evidence is so shaky. And the implications are terrible—kids going hungry.

While they both make valid points, it seems like they’re missing the main culprit of childhood obesity, which is the type of food, not necessarily the quantity.

The in-class breakfasts at these city schools are said to feature “tempting treats” such as cream cheese and bagels, string cheese and apple loaf. And, based on what people like Jamie Oliver have revealed in the past, we all know the unhealthy foods probably don’t stop there. Yes, the federal guidelines mandate that the meals be roughly 450 calories, but 450 calories of what? Because a breakfast with 450 calories of fresh fruit, low-sugar cereal and skim milk would likely not contribute to childhood obesity, even if a student ate it twice a day.

Instead of arguing about this and possibly putting a much-needed program in jeopardy, the health officials need to pay more attention to the quality of food served, versus the quantity these underprivileged kids are eating. After all, if they come from poor homes where food is lacking, how can anyone deny them a healthy breakfast? Or two?

via Not Solving Childhood Obesity: Health Officials Say Free School Breakfast Makes Poor Kids Fat.

January 4, 2012, Fox News, Chris Kilham

Americans are living longer than ever before. As a result of greatly improved sanitation, hygiene, nutrition, life-saving drugs and medical care, lifespan has increased significantly.

At the time of the American Revolution in 1776, the average life expectancy in the United States was a paltry 30 years of age. Back then, you had to make your mark early, because your stay in this world was likely to be brief.

Today, the average American life expectancy is close to 80, and the fastest growing segment of the American population is adults 85 years or older.

Whereas age 65 was once considered old, now it’s just upper middle age.

The population group that will live longer than any other thus far is the baby boomer generation, which accounts for a whopping 76 million adults and represents 42 percent of all Americans over 21. This generation initiated a gerontological explosion in the year 2011, as its earliest members turned 65.

While there may not be an actual fountain of youth, we are continually re-defining old age and pushing the limits of lifespan further and further.

And now the bad news
Increased lifespan may sound like a dream come true. But it may be a nightmare in progress. Unless we assume far greater responsibility for our health, current increases in longevity spell decrepitude and financial disaster for millions of Americans.

If rates of disease and disability continue at their current levels, America will become a nation of sick, senile, disenfranchised, impoverished seniors, with too few resources to care for them and astronomical medical costs that will cripple our economy.

Consider the following: The average American over the age of 65 suffers multiple chronic conditions, including hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, hearing and vision disorders. This group accounts for one third of all health care spending, one third of prescription drug use and 40 percent of doctor visits.

Over 25 percent of those 85 or older require institutional care. Unless the economic structure of the nation is substantially re-vamped, Medicare will run out of funds by 2029. Suddenly, the idea of living 100 years or more loses some of its luster.
Sobering health figures

The following figures underscore the serious health challenges we face as we age.

Cardiovascular disease
-According to the American Heart Association, approximately 1 million American adults die annually of heart attack.
-An estimated half million Americans suffer strokes annually, thirty percent of which result in death.

Cancer
-According to the American Cancer Society, 1 out of every 3 Americans (more than 86 million Americans alive today, will get cancer.
-1.35 million Americans will be diagnosed with cancer this year.
-538,000 Americans will die of cancer this year.

Arthritis
-Arthritis is the number one cause of disability in the US.
-According to the Arthritis Foundation, 40 million Americans have arthritis.
-According to the Centers for Disease Control, by 2020, 59.4 million Americans will have arthritis.

Diabetes
-According to the American Diabetes Association, 16 million Americans have diabetes.
-800,000 diabetics are insulin – dependent.
-400,000 people die each year from diabetes.
-Each year 625,000 new cases of diabetes are diagnosed.

Obesity
-According to national health statistics, 62 percent of Americans are overweight. Many are obese, exceeding recommended weights by 25 percent or more.

Alzheimer’s disease
-According to the Alzheimer’s Foundation, 4 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s disease.
-14 million Americans are expected to have Alzheimer’s by the year 2050.
-One in 10 persons over 65 develops Alzheimer’s.
-50 percent of those over 85 develop Alzheimer’s.

Faced with the magnitude of such a great aging explosion, we can’t expect our medical system to catch us as we fall.

Health care in the U.S. is currently in crisis, and many people have lost confidence in medicine. Medical services are expensive, and insurance is becoming prohibitively costly.

The great majority of doctors are specialists in disease care, not in prevention and are primarily familiar with drugs and surgery. Thus preventing disease and designing programs to keep people fit for life are largely enterprises outside of the medical realm.

Health is not a medical condition, and physicians are not the gatekeepers of fitness and wellness. We are our own gatekeepers.

Large numbers of people are venturing outside of the conventional medical establishment in a quest to manage and promote their own health, fitness and well being. They are becoming much more active in finding ways to deal with common ailments on their own.

This signifies a profound shift toward self directed health care. In response to this shift, medical educators are beginning to grapple with wellness and prevention as areas of medical specialty. This is critically important, for if physicians are going to play any significant future role in keeping our aging population healthy, they must be become astute specialists in prevention, fitness and wellness.

Increasing fitness span
The shape of the future is ours to determine. Will we live to be energetic, healthy centenarians, or will we spend the last decades of our lives sick, incapacitated and institutionalized? The issue is one of fitness span.

Lifespan is how long you live. Fitness span is how long you stay fit and healthy. Getting fit is a necessity, not an option.

Health and fitness begin to decline at around age 40 when age-related degenerative conditions begin to take their toll. Our task is to extend fitness span to match life span, so we stay fit and healthy until we die.
In the quest for health, millions of Americans are turning to alternative and complementary therapies and products, including supplements, herbs, and homeopathic medicines.

News media are now promoting the safety, efficacy and overall wellness benefits of these programs and products, and scientists continue to affirm that these approaches impart real health benefits that treat ailments ranging from indigestion to allergies.

True fitness is a state of wellness, abundant energy and a feeling of being whole and intact. It is a dynamic, vital condition which must be managed daily. Since this is an inalterable fact of life, you might as well dive into this endeavor wholeheartedly, with a galvanized and enthusiastic determination to stay fit for as long as you live.

Read more: Health Challenges Facing Baby Boomers | Fox News.

December 15, 2011. LiveScience.com, Joseph Brownstein, MyHealthNewsDaily

Displaying the amount of time you’d need to jog in order to burn off the calories from a sugary drink, rather than showing a calorie count, may be more effective in dissuading you from consuming those beverages, new research suggests.

Researchers observed teenagers at stores in West Baltimore, where signs displayed either calorie counts, calorie counts as a percent of recommended daily calorie intake, or the time spent jogging that would be needed to burn off those calories. While all led teenagers to purchase fewer sugary beverages, the conversion to exercise minutes was the most effective.

“In general, people are very bad at estimating the amount of calories in food they consume,” said study researcher Sara Bleich, an assistant professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. “If we give them easy ways of examining it…I think we can be effective in reducing calories in purchases.”

After introducing the signs to neighborhood stores near schools, researchers observed teenagers and monitored how their beverage-purchasing habits changed compared with the period before the signs went up.

About 93 drinks a day were purchased in each store, on average, and this number declined slightly when the signs went up. Soda sales, which made up almost half of all purchases, dipped slightly, as did those of iced tea and sports drinks. However, sales of non-sugary beverages increased, especially sales of water, which went from 5 to 10 drinks sold daily, on average.

While all three types of signs seemed to reduce the number of sugary drinks that were bought, only the signs displaying exercise times had results strong enough to mean researchers knew the decrease in purchases could not be due to simple chance.

250 calories, or a 40-minute jog?

Researchers calculated the exercise times based on a 110-pound teenager, and jogging was chosen because many people don’t like to do it, Bleich said. Exercise times, she noted, would vary depending on a person’s weight. For example, a 110-pound person would need to jog for 50 minutes to burn off a 20-ounce bottle of soda, whereas a 150-pound person would need to jog for 40 minutes.

Some stores chose not to participate; their reasons included a language barrier and a fear of losing sales. Bleich said the sales issue may be an obstacle going forward, but the study offered some reassurance, as students bought more water when the calorie signs went up.

Bleich said they chose to study black teenagers because they are one of the groups with the highest levels of obesity, and tend to have lower levels of health information. A wider study is planned that includes Hispanic teenagers as well, she said.

Calorie counts soon to appear on more menus

If the results hold, the study may have a wider-reaching impact.

“It was a very interesting study, and I think most Americans would be floored to learn it takes 50 minutes to burn off one 20-ounce bottle of soda, basically a nutritionally worthless beverage,” said Julie Greenstein, deputy director of health promotion policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a health and nutrition advocacy group.

“I think there’d have to be some further studies on that to see if there would be an impact,” Greenstein said. “If it does have an impact, the federal government should consider this on a broader scale.

“Sometimes other messages are more beneficial to reducing consumption. I think it makes sense to focus on sugary drinks, since they are the largest single source of calories.”

Bleich said that was one reason the study focused on beverages. With a mandate for calorie counts in larger restaurant chains coming next year, she said it is important to find a way to convey that information in a way the consumer understands.

While the current study was in black teenagers, Bleich said this means of conveying the information may work even better in other demographics.

“My sense would be if you did this sort of study in a group of people for whom nutrition or fitness might be more important, you might have a bigger effect,” she said. “If you’re more interested in changing your behavior, you’re more likely to pay attention to this sort of information.”

The study appears in the Dec. 15 edition of the American Journal of Public Health.
If 250 Calorie Label Doesnt Stop You, 50-Minute Jog Label Might | Food Nutrition Labels Should Be Based on Exercise, Researchers Say | LiveScience.

December 4, 2011, 

All stakeholders must collaborate in the prevention of obesity.

THE World Health Organization (WHO) has highlighted that obesity has reached epidemic proportions globally, with at least 2.6 million people dying each year as a result of being overweight or obese.

Once considered a problem only in high-income countries, the incidence of overweight and obesity are now dramatically on the rise in low- and middle-income countries. It is an ever increasing problem, and worldwide, obesity has more than doubled since 1980.

In 2008, it was estimated that 1.5 billion adults were overweight. Of these, over 200 million men and nearly 300 million women were obese.

Overweight and obesity are major risk factors for a number of chronic diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer. All efforts must therefore be made to reduce the extent of the problem and prevent the disease.

The WHO has emphasised that governments, international partners, civil society, non-governmental organisations and the private sector all have vital roles to play in contributing to obesity prevention.

READ MORE AT Obesity is preventable.

Associated Press/The Washington Post, November 29, 2011

The case of an 8-year-old third-grader weighing more than 200 pounds has renewed a debate on whether parents should lose custody if a child is severely obese.

Roughly 2 million U.S. children are extremely obese — weighing significantly more than what’s considered healthy.

A Cleveland Heights boy was taken from his family and was placed in foster care in October after county case workers said his mother wasn’t doing enough to control his weight. The boy, at his weight, is considered at risk for developing such diseases as diabetes and high blood pressure. Government growth charts say most boys his age weigh about 60 pounds.

Cuyahoga County removed the boy because case workers considered the mother’s inability to get his weight down a form of medical neglect. The county’s Children and Family Services agency said Monday it stood by its custody move, which was approved by a judge.

“We have worked very hard with this family for 20 months before it got to this point,” agency Administrator Patricia Rideout said.

Rideout said the issue has created a buzz among agency staff members and she has heard it was a popular Internet item. She said she was following state law in withholding the boy’s name in his best interest.

There’s no easy answer when it comes to determining who’s to blame in such obesity cases, said Dr. Naim Alkhouri, who works with overweight children and their families at Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital and leads its pediatric metabolic clinic.

“It’s not only the parents or the child,” he said. “Obesity is an epidemic in the United States. As a society we’re all responsible.”

It’s not enough to just encourage some children to eat healthier and exercise, he said, because there’s also “a big psychological component.”

“When it comes to involving the authorities, I don’t think we have clear guidelines,” he said. “Starting the debate is a good thing. We need more guidance on how to react to the issue.”
Read the rest of the article via 200-pound 8-year-old in Ohio highlights question: Should parents of obese kids lose custody? – The Washington Post.