Welcome to “FitnessMantra Weekend”, your once-a-week health news update. As always you can also stay updated with the latest in fitness news by subscribing separately to the Fitness Mantra del.icio.us feed.

WebMD is reporting that only “1 in 7 Adults Eat Right and Exercise” and in a nation with increasing obesity in both adults and children, this is definitely not the direction this statistic should be heading.

“No matter what group, the American public isn’t eating enough fruits and vegetables,” says Mary Kay Solera, director of CDC’s fruit and vegetable program and one of the study’s authors.

Solera confirms that the study may overestimate actual healthy behaviors because it was based on subjects’ self-reports. Research participants are known to routinely overestimate good behaviors and underestimate bad ones.

“My gosh, we’ve got to do more,” Solera is reported to have told WebMD. She can say that again!

More top health and fitness stories for this week:

1. 1 in 7 Adults Eat Right and Exercise: As Americans spend billions each year on diet and exercise habits, it seems only a few are exercising at all, a new study shows.
2. Fat hormone ‘boosts colon cancer’: A chemical produced by fat cells makes colon cancers grow faster, a US study has suggested.
3. USDA Seeks More Healthful School Meals: As part of a sweeping effort to help improve nutrition for schoolchildren and fight childhood obesity, the Agriculture Department is proposing for the first time to require schools to bring their cafeteria menus into compliance with the latest U.S. dietar
4. Why raiding the fridge at night is a bad idea: it’s not so much when you eat as what and how much that really counts.
5. Vegetables, Milk May Help People Quit Smoking: A Duke University study shows that fruits, vegetables, and dairy foods make cigarettes taste terrible.
6. Body Image: Bigger Can Be Beautiful: Do you have to be thin to be gorgeous? Not at all. Just take a look at supermodel and TV talk show host Tyra Banks, who recently showed off a healthy body and a healthy body image.
7. Med diet ‘could prevent asthma’: Eating a Mediterranean diet could help protect children from respiratory allergies and asthma, a study suggests.
8. Get your belly beach ready: Instead of buying into a quick fix this year, why not follow some of the experts’ advice for kicking that spare tire for good?
9. Exercise can prevent arthritis in women: Exercise isn’t just about improving your heart and fighting flab that comes with aging. It may also be the answer to preventing stiff, achy joints that can lead to debilitating arthritis.
10. Japanese bingeing on Krispy Kremes: After years of staying slim on a humble diet of fish, vegetables and rice, Japanese are developing a sweet tooth.
11. Eggs raise cholesterol and other myths: Avoid eggs. Drink 8 glasses of water a day. Eating carbs will make you fat. Nutritional advice such as this has been touted for years — but is it accurate?
12. $500 Million Pledged to Fight Childhood Obesity: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation plans to spend more than $500 million over the next five years to reverse the increase in childhood obesity.
13. Red meat ‘ups breast cancer risk’: Eating red meat significantly increases a post-menopausal woman’s chance of breast cancer, research suggests.
14. Pregnancy weight can lead to fat toddlers: Women in the study who gained the recommended amount of weight ran four times the risk of having a child who was overweight at age 3, compared to women who gained less than the advised amount.
15. Junk food ad ban comes into force: Junk food adverts have been banned from television when programmes aimed at young children are being shown.
16. Fat heart patients ‘more prone to infection’: OBESE people are more likely to develop infected wounds and renal failure after heart surgery, research shows.
17. Obesity May Make Asthma More Likely: Being overweight or obese may make asthma more likely, a new study shows.
18. Nurses feel strain of obese patients: Obese patients could be causing thousands of nurses to seek treatment for back pain, according to experts.
19. The 300 Workout: Can You Handle It?: The training regimen that whipped actors of the movie 300 into fighting shape may be too much for most of us.
20. Eating healthy at the airport: Airport security procedures and airline budgets are leading to ripples of change in layover time, airport restaurant options and in-flight food service. All this adds up to major strategy adjustments for people trying to eat healthy while traveling.
21. Omega-3 Fatty Acid May Protect Heart: An omega-3 fatty acid found in fish oil may help prevent nonfatal heart problems in some people with high cholesterol, a Japanese study shows.

Get the best health and fitness stories of the week in your RSS inbox.

Have a great weekend!

Technorati Tags: health, fitness, health news, fitness news, health links, fitness links, del.icio.us

Related Posts:

• Breathing exercises help with asthma
• Americans read food labels, but don’t care
• FitnessMantra Weekend: Is Waist Size The New Obesity Indicator?

Welcome to “FitnessMantra Weekend”, your once-a-week health news update. As always you can also stay updated with the latest in fitness news by subscribing separately to the Fitness Mantra del.icio.us feed.

An acute problem these days is the number of commercials shown during children’s shows that feature sugar and fat-loaded products (usually promoted by some of the characters from the very show the kids were watching thus blurring the lines between the show and the commercial.

Children’s TV ads loaded with junk food proclaims the MSNBC news article about this topic:

“The vast majority of the foods that kids see advertised on television today are for products that nutritionists would tell us they need to be eating less of, not more of, if we’re going to get a handle on childhood obesity,” said Vicki Rideout of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which conducts health research.

The researchers monitored 13 television networks and found that children between teh ages of 8 and 12 saw almost 21 food-related commercials a day. And just what kinds of foods were these?

Of food ads that targeted children, 34 percent were for candy and snacks, 29 percent for cereal, 10 percent for beverages, 10 percent for fast food, 4 percent for dairy products, 4 percent for prepared food and the rest for breads and pastries and dine-in restaurants.

Yes you read that right: number of messages about fresh fruits and vegetables: zero. Read the full article to learn a few more shocking statistics. How do you solve this problem in your home? How do you respond when kids come up to you asking for a particular cereal or candy believing that the food has to be good because their favorite cartoon character is endorsing it? Do share your thoughts in the comments area.

The week’s top health and fitness stories follow:

1. Beyond Snack Packs: 22 Healthy Munchies: How Healthy Are 100-Calorie Snack Packs? And what alternatives could one turn to?
2. Diabetes Linked to Parkinson’s Disease: Having diabetes may increase the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease.
3. Exercise prevents repetitive strain injury: An active lifestyle outside of work may help protect against work-related repetitive strain injury, a Canadian study found.
4. Got a Fat Tooth?: Make way, sweet tooth; scientists believe we reach for the greasy french fries, creamy premium ice creams, butter, and other fatty foods because of a different culprit — the “fat tooth.”
5. High BMI has pros, cons in prostate cancer: A high body mass index (BMI) does not increase the risk of developing prostate cancer, but once the disease occurs, a high BMI is associated with a greater risk of dying from the cancer, researchers report.
6. Sedentary behavior linked to high blood sugar: People who tend to be sedentary — as indicated by the amount of time they spend watching television — are likely to have high levels of glucose in their blood, even though they may not be diabetic.
7. Children’s TV ads loaded with junk food: In a child’s buffet of food commercials, more than 40 percent of the dishes are candy, snacks and fast food. Nowhere to be found: fresh fruit, vegetables, poultry or seafood.
8. Portion control ‘the way to healthier eating’: SMALLER size packs of chocolate, crisps and other foods should be encouraged to help people eat more healthily, the official food watchdog said yesterday.
9. Dodge Type 2 Diabetes With Extra Dairy and Activity!: Key lifestyle components to reduce the risk of diabetes include a moderate-calorie, lower-fat diet that supports weight loss coupled with increased physical activity. Beyond that, recent research indicates that dairy products may offer additional diabetes
10. Obesity shortens kids’ life spans: The childhood obesity “epidemic” is so disturbing that today’s children will become the first generation in some time to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents, a new report says.
11. High Trans Fat Intake Triples Heart Disease Risk: Women who eat diets rich in unhealthy trans fats have three times the risk of heart disease as those with the lowest intake, a new study finds.
12. Healthy pizza not a half-baked idea: It’s the junk food junkie’s wildest dream come true - pizza as health food.
13. Sally Squires - Can a Healthy Snack Be Tasty?: Question is: How do the fairly-good-for-you [snack] items taste?
14. Longer journeys to school drive obesity: According to the research from Loughborough’s School of Sport and Exercise Science - which didn’t look at diet - one of the biggest causes of young people’s sedentary lifestyles was the growth in the amount of time they spent in the car.
15. ‘Good fat’ diet OK for heart attack: A Mediterranean-style diet high in olive oil and other healthy fats is just as good as the classic American Heart Association low-fat diet for the 8 million Americans who have suffered a heart attack and want to prevent a repeat, new research sugges
16. Blueberries tackle bowel cancer: A compound in blueberries may be good for preventing bowel cancer, US scientists believe.

Get the best health and fitness stories of the week in your RSS inbox.

Have a great weekend!

Technorati Tags: health, fitness, health news, fitness news, health links, fitness links, del.icio.us

Related Posts:

• Food Marketing and Childhood Obesity
• FitnessMantra Weekend: The McDonald’s Effect On Children’s Taste
• FitnessMantra Weekend: Even Overweight Kids Feel Social Stigma