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 28, 2012, Dayton Daily News, Cornelius Frolik

About 78,000 people in the Miami Valley live in poorer areas that lack markets that sell affordable and nutritious food, and low-income residents and those without post-secondary educations have some of the highest obesity rates in the state.

Experts said the struggling economy is likely contributing to bulging waistlines, because consumers are spending less on food and some are sacrificing nutrition for the sake of cost. Health experts said obesity is an “epidemic” that often has grave medical consequences.

“A lot of people are digging their graves with their forks,” said Dr. John Maguire, medical director for the surgical weight-loss program at Miami Valley Hospital.

In 2010, about 34.3 percent of Ohioans earning $15,000 or less were obese, which is defined as having a body mass index of 30 or more, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.” Similarly, 35.5 percent of Ohioans earning between $15,000 and $30,000 were obese.

But among Ohioans earning $50,000 or more, only about 27 percent were obese.

Disparities also exist among Ohioans of various education levels.

In 2010, about 35 percent of adult Ohioans who had not graduated from high school were obese, and so were about 33 percent of adults who had a high school diploma or a general equivalency diploma, according to the CDC.

In contrast, only about 24 percent of Ohioans with college degrees are obese.

Healthier food is more costly

In general, people with less education earn less, and people with low incomes live in poorer neighborhoods, which are rife with obstacles to staying fit and eating well, said Jeffrey Levi, executive director of the Washington, D.C.,-based Trust for America’s Health.

READ MORE via 78,000 area residents live in food wastelands.

January 28, 2012, Christina Hoag, AP, San Jose Mercury News

Students at Roosevelt High School have declared a food fight to win back peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Fed up with new, healthy cafeteria cuisine that features dishes like ancho chili chicken with yakosoba edamame and tortellini with butternut squash, they’re petitioning the school district to return old favorites like PB&J and calzones to the lunch lineup.

“We, the students of Roosevelt High School, would like to be served food that we can enjoy eating, rather than the ‘healthier’ food that we just throw away,” states the petition being circulated at the 3,200-student school located in a low income neighborhood just east of downtown Los Angeles.

School districts across the nation, including Los Angeles Unified, are revamping lunch trays to meet tighter federal nutrition standards designed to stem obesity, which affects about a third of children nationally. The U.S. Department of Agriculture this week announced new guidelines calling for milk to be skim or low-fat, grains to be whole, and double the amount of fruit and vegetables.

But as many parents can attest, getting kids to try new foods, especially ones that are good for them, can be a battle of wits and wills. Little kids tend to be less finicky than big kids, who look for that elusive factor of “coolness” in everything from fashion to French fries.

“Essentially, you’re competing with McDonald’s,” said Susan Levin, director of nutrition education for the
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Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, who works with school districts on their menus. “But it can be done.”

The emphasis on nutrition is a major swing from the 1990s when some schools featured brand-name fast-food burgers and pizza for lunch and sold potato chips, cookies and sodas in vending machines.
With national attention turning to climbing rates of childhood diabetes and other weight-related ailments, many districts have now outlawed everything from trans fats to deep-frying. Some have even dispensed with chocolate milk because of the added sugar.

But districts have found that getting kids to change eating habits isn’t easy, and involves both smarter menus and a dollop of marketing.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, which serves 650,000 meals a day, saw school lunch participation plunge by some 12 percent after unveiling the new dishes. Kids have gradually come around—participation is now down by only 5 percent as compared to last year.

Chicago Public Schools saw a 5 percent drop when it did a menu makeover last year.

High school students have some of the toughest palates to please.
READ MORE via LA schools struggle to make healthy meals popular – San Jose Mercury News.

January 28, 2012, Brittany Givens, Seascoastonline.com

U.S. Department of Agriculture Under Secretary Kevin W. Concannon said school lunch programs should be providing children with more fruits and vegetables.

“We have a serious problem of obesity in the country,” Concannon told a group of local nutrition and health services professionals Friday. “We really need to focus on activity and healthy foods.”

Concannon was the featured speaker in a roundtable discussion at Community Campus. The event was attended by representatives from programs such as St. Vincent’s, Southern New Hampshire Services and the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension. Participants discussed ways in which schools could improve lunches and how the USDA has been able to help people in tough economical times.

This week, 101,000 schools across the country celebrated a nutrition week by improving the dietary value of school lunch programs.

Concannon discussed ways that the USDA plans to take these efforts further and shared reasons for the program’s success. He said that one of the USDA’s major goals is to improve the diets of Americans from birth.

Representatives from local nutrition organizations voiced concerns over the current situation in schools. Many were concerned with the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables in schools and wanted to see less canned foods and sugar.

Other concerns included a need for more storage space for fruits and vegetables, as well as easier and cheaper ways to provide milk and meat.

Concannon also spoke about USDA’s efforts to help those who cannot afford to eat healthy.

“We’re living through a … tough time in the economy,” Concannon said. “I’ve been to food banks and pantries and I always hear, ‘I never thought I’d be here.’”

The USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has helped 46 million people, Concannon said.

via USDA official stresses need for nutrition in school food | SeacoastOnline.com.

 January 25, 2012, by Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz, Chicago Tribune

Confused about which carbohydrates you should be eating?

Welcome to the club.

“It’s the biggest lack-of-consensus issue in the U.S. diet today,” said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health. “We don’t have a standard method for assessing their quality.”

Carbohydrates, the most common of the three energy sources we get from food (the others are fat and protein), reside in the vast majority of our food, prominently in grains, vegetables, legumes and fruits. They are essential to good health — as long as you stick to the good sources and steer clear of the bad ones, which are linked to obesity and a host of chronic conditions, includingdiabetes and heart disease.

Most health experts agree that processed foods, sweetened beverages and refined grains such as white bread, pasta, flour and rice (which are stripped of their nutrients) are among the worst kinds of carbohydrate-rich foods you can eat.

Your digestive system breaks them down too easily, flooding the bloodstream with simple sugars (glucose), which in turn prompts a surge of the hormone insulin to carry the glucose into the body’s cells, said Michael Roizen, chairman of the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute and co-founder of realage.com. Too muchblood sugar and insulin for too long can be dangerous on several levels: more fat storage, less fat burning, malfunctioning proteins that eventually lead to organ damage, even cancer cell growth, Roizen said. Your brain also gets addicted to the high glucose levels, leaving you craving more.

What constitutes a good carb, however, can be trickier.

It’s not as basic as “simple” versus “complex,” as fruits contain simple sugars but are a highly desirable carb source.

Rather, four main factors determine the quality of a carb, Mozaffarian said: dietary fiber (the more the better); how fast it makes your blood sugar rise (aka glycemic index, the lower the better); whole-grain content (the more the better); and structure (if it’s liquid, milled or pulverized, it’s not as good).

January 25, 2012, Houston Chronicle

School lunches, long saddled with an unhealthy reputation, are getting a makeover.Instead of salt-doused fried foods, highly processed white bread and sugar-laden desserts, cafeteria trays will be carrying whole wheat pizza, leafy green and orange vegetables and fresh fruit.The changes, announced Wednesday by first lady Michelle Obama and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, mark the first major nutritional adjustment to the $11 billion school meal program in 15 years.

Under the new guidelines, which were directed by the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, schools must limit calories, trans fat and sodium, while serving students a wider variety of fruit, vegetables and whole grains.The nutritional overhaul reflects both a societal shift toward a more health-conscious diet and a growing concern about childhood obesity, which affects 17 percent of the countrys children.”When we send our kids to school, we expect that they wont be eating the kind of fatty, salty, sugary foods that we try to keep them from eating at home,” Obama said in a statement.The updated regulations were first proposed a year ago, giving school districts the opportunity to make comments and revamp their menus.

After opposition by potato growers and food companies, Congress blocked proposed changes that would have limited starchy vegetables to two servings a week and required pizza makers to increase the amount of tomato paste to qualify as a vegetable serving.

Local districts effortsThe new rules, which will affect 32 million children, will be phased in over the next three years.Many Houston-area school districts have already taken steps to raise nutritional standards, instituting changes that mirror many of the new USDA requirements.

Read more via School lunches get a healthy makeover – Houston Chronicle.

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.

Feeding preschoolers smaller portions of the main dish at lunchtime means they’ll eat more fruit and vegetables on the side and fewer total calories, according to a new study.

Researchers said the finding may give parents one extra strategy to encourage youngsters to eat more greens, as childhood obesity rates continue rising and research suggests that kids lag well behind guidelines for fruit and veggie consumption.

With main courses, “you need to be careful and use the age-appropriate serving,” said Sara Sweitzer, a nutrition researcher from the University of Texas at Austin.

“If they fill up on the entree, obviously the fruit and the vegetable are the last to get eaten,” added Sweitzer, who wasn’t involved in the new study.

Parents can make sure they’re providing the right amount of food both by inspecting what’s left in the lunch box when kids come home, and by talking to their kids about how much they eat.

“Go ahead and ask your child, ‘Do you want a whole sandwich or do you want just half a sandwich?’” she advised.

READ MORE VIA: Smaller servings mean more balanced meals for kids: study – chicagotribune.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.