December 7, 2011
Parents have good reason to worry about the sugar content of children’s breakfast cereals, according to an Environmental Working Group review of 84 popular brands.
Kellogg’s Honey Smacks, at nearly 56 percent sugar by weight, leads the list of the 10 worst children’s cereals, according to EWG’s analysis. In fact, a one-cup serving of the brand packs more sugar than a Hostess Twinkie, and one cup of any of the 44 other children’s cereals has more sugar than three Chips Ahoy! cookies.
In response to the exploding childhood obesity epidemic and aggressive food company …

Do you hate airplane food? Are you concerned about their nutritional value? Then check out the airline survey of plane food:
This is the annual DietDetective.com airline survey. Each year I contact the media relations departments of the various airlines to request nutrition information for the foods they serve economy-class passengers on domestic flights. This year, finally, all but two airlines were helpful. Wow, maybe they’re finally getting how important it is to provide this information to the public.
Check out the survey at: Annual Airline Snacking and Onboard Food Survey with Health …

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 …

USA Today, August 23, 2011
Where’s the beef? Not in Bill Clinton’s diet.
The former president, known for his love of burgers, barbecue and junk food, has gone from a meat lover to a vegan, the strictest form of a vegetarian diet. He says he eats fruits, vegetables and beans, but no red meat, chicken or dairy.
Clinton, 65, who had quadruple bypass surgery in 2004 and then stent surgery in 2010, is following this eating plan to improve his heart health.
He talked about his plant-based diet last year, saying he lost 24 …

August 13, 2011, AAP
SCIENTISTS have come up with a novel way of helping overweight people drop some kilos – retraining their taste buds.
Australian researchers have found that overweight and obese people who regularly tuck into fatty foods are less able to taste fat.
As fat promotes fullness, if a person is insensitive to fat their body will not send out signals telling them they are full and need to stop eating.
However the researchers found that switching to a low fat diet made people more sensitive to tasting fat, increasing their ability …

Los Angeles Times, August 8, 2011, Jeanine Stein
Obese men who want to improve their sexual health might have another solution besides their erectile dysfunction drugs. A study finds that overweight men who lost just 5% of their weight over eight weeks saw improvements in erectile dysfunction, sexual desire and urinary tract symptoms.
The small study focused on 31 obese men with a body mass index of 30 or greater and who had Type 2 diabetes. Some were put on a low-calorie diet that included liquid meal replacements and others were assigned …

July 19, 2011, TIME, Jeffrey Kluger
Want to lose weight? How about trying to bore yourself thin? According to a study that will  be published in the August issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, monotony at mealtime might be a clever — if  unexciting — way to reduce calorie consumption.
Human beings come pre-loaded with a sort of habituation threshold and it shows itself in a lot of ways. Hear the same pop song too often and you eventually want to fling the CD out the window. See the same …

People tend to lose a little more weight with online help than with traditional weight loss programs, according to a new study from Japan.
 
Reuters Health, June 28, 2011, Eric Schultz
With obesity on the rise, there have been many attempts to take advantage of the Internet to help people lose weight, mainly because it’s thought to be easier and less expensive.
But the effect of including online help in obesity treatment programs was pretty small in the new study.
Overall, patients in programs with a web component lost an average of a pound …

June 17, 2011, Leeann Maton, Sun Times
He blanketed the Chicago airwaves with ads for his weight loss clinics.
Now Dr. Gautam Gupta is the subject of a nationwide manhunt after being charged with defrauding state and private insurance companies out of $25 million, according to the FBI.
Gupta, 57, who owns and operates several area Nutrition Clinic locations, was charged with felony counts of mail fraud, health care fraud and conspiracy in a criminal complaint announced on Friday.
Gupta or his staff allegedly submitted claims to both the Blue Cross/Blue Shield Insurance Company …

The Times of India, November 23, 2010
Nearly 25 per cent of overweight and 16 percent of normal weight women of reproductive-age misperceive their body weight, says a new study.
The research from University of Texas Medical Branch suggests that this misperception affects women’s weight-related behaviours making many vulnerable to cardiovascular and other obesity-related diseases.
The researchers also found that overweight women who perceive themselves as normal weight were significantly less likely to report weight-related behaviours, such as dieting.
“As obesity numbers climb, many women identify overweight as normal, not based on the scale …