Brazilians feel the most pressure to be thin, the Finns are acutely aware of the dangers of obesity and Americans have the toughest struggle to lose weight, according to a global survey. About 1.6 billion people around the world are overweight or obese. The Reader Digest poll also revealed that Russians smoke the most to try to drop excess weight, and along with Germans and Indians they are most likely to blame genetics for their penchant for piling on the pounds. ”Our poll makes it clear that people around the world are struggling with their weight,” said Peggy Northrop, the vice president and global editor-in-chief of the magazine. (more…)

“I DON’T need family-dinner studies to guilt-trip me,” said Shannon Rubio, a mother of three teenage boys from Spring, Tex. “I do it to myself.” But just in case, Mrs. Rubio, here is the latest, from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse(CASA) at Columbia University: Teenagers who eat with their families less than three times a week are more likely to turn to alcohol, tobacco and drugs than those who dine with their families five times a week. Since the first CASA study in 1996, the news media passionately presses the cause; it’s a cornerstone of the slow-parenting movement. A mushrooming industry of cookbooks, advice columns and even takeout foods repackaged as “family dinners” beckon folks to the table. Coca-Cola, Smucker’s and Stouffer’s were among the sponsors for activities for the annual Family Day (Sept. 28 this year), designed to promote family dinners. So it’s not surprising that many parents, especially mothers, who work night shifts or long hours, or who, like Mrs. Rubio, have teenagers running every which way to activities, are painfully aware that nightly dinners ’round the table are something other families get to do.  (more…)

For years I have been saying that some of my best thinking occurs when I am on my bike. I just assumed that it was the lack of distractions that drove some of that clarity. Looks like there could be more to it than that. Recent research supports the theory that active exercise does improve brain processes.  (more..)

Took awhile but I think I found a silver lining to the recession — fitness. I have increasingly noticed more people running, biking, and walking during working hours so I decided to google “recession fitness.”  Looks like my casual observation was spot on. While conventional wisdom says we turn to comfort foods and cocoon at home in our jammies when the economy goes south, research suggests that it may actually be the opposite—that during a downturn, we exercise more and are less likely to be obese than when times are good. Christopher Ruhm, the Jefferson-Pilot Professor of Economics at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, has published research indicating that mortality actually decreases when the economy goes temporarily sour and suggesting that a drop in body weight and increase in physical activity—as well as a decline in smoking—are partially responsible. Plus, with tons of free time, there is simply no longer a good excuse for not getting out and moving it.  (more…)

A note to food marketers: Consumers who say they want healthy options are unlikely to actually order off the healthy menu. ”There’s definitely a dichotomy between what people say they want and what they actually do when it comes to healthy restaurant eating,” Maria Caranfa, a registered dietitian and director at Mintel Menu Insights, said in a statement. “Over eight in 10 adults told us it’s very or somewhat important to them to eat healthy, but when it comes to dining out, most people are really looking for taste, texture and experience.” Mintel found that only one in five consumers rank a food’s health attributes as an important factor when choosing dinner. But 77% of them thought about “taste,” and 44% considered “hunger satisfaction.” And a particular problem for restaurants: While roughly 75% of those surveyed said they would like to see more healthy options, only 51% order from those selections. (more…)

On the heels of successful shows like “The Biggest Loser,” ABC is teaming with British chef Jamie Oliver and Ryan Seacrest for a new series that gives healthy makeovers to an entire city. Oliver will travel to the unhealthiest places in America and find ways to use nearby resources to improve local eating habits. The network has ordered six hours of the project from Ryan Seacrest Productions. The series is loosely inspired on Oliver’s acclaimed school lunch project in the U.K., where the chef set about to improve kids’ nutrition. His effort to improve one school’s offerings, documented in the 2005 series “Jamie’s School Dinners,” shamed educators into passing new measures to ban certain junk foods. I plan to eat at Oliver’s “fifteen” next month so I’ll let you know if his brand of healthy and responsible still tastes good. In the meantime, nutrition and health as entertainment continues to grow. (more…)

In her first weeks in the White House, Mrs. Obama has emerged as a champion of healthy food and healthy living. She has praised community vegetable gardens, opened up her own kitchen to show off the White House chefs’ prowess with vegetables and told stories about feeding less fattening foods to her daughters. Mrs. Obama cheerfully admits to an occasional hankering for fast food. It’s all about eating in moderation, she said, emphasizing the kind of flexibility that might make it easier for people to relate to her message. (more…)

While scarcely any expert would criticize parents for paying attention to children’s diets, many doctors, dietitians and eating disorder specialists worry that some parents are becoming overzealous, even obsessive, in efforts to engender good eating habits in children. With the best of intentions, these parents may be creating an unhealthy aura around food. “We’re seeing a lot of anxiety in these kids,” said Cynthia Bulik, the director of the eating disorders program at theUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “They go to birthday parties, and if it’s not a granola cake they feel like they can’t eat it. The culture has led both them and their parents to take the public health messages to an extreme.” (more…)

Parents who smoke often open a window or turn on a fan to clear the air for their children, but experts now have identified a related threat to children’s health that isn’t as easy to get rid of: third-hand smoke. That’s the term being used to describe the invisible yet toxic brew of gases and particles clinging to smokers’ hair and clothing, not to mention cushions and carpeting, that lingers long after second-hand smoke has cleared from a room. The residue includes heavy metals, carcinogens and even radioactive materials that young children can get on their hands and ingest, especially if they’re crawling or playing on the floor.  (more…)

In yet another blow to the fast food industry, a research report out of Sweden this past week indicated that mice fed junk food for nine months showed signs of developing the abnormal brain tangles strongly associated with Alzheimer’s disease. ”On examining the brains of these mice, we found a chemical change not unlike that found in the Alzheimer brain,” said Susanne Akterin, a researcher at the Karolinska Institutet’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, who led the study. ”We now suspect that a high intake of fat and cholesterol in combination with genetic factors … can adversely affect several brain substances, which can be a contributory factor in the development of Alzheimer’s.” (more…)