Welcome to the second edition of del.icio.us Friday, my weekly feature to keep you updated with the top news from the word of health, nutrition and fitness. Remember you can stay updated with this news as it happens by subscribing separately to the Fitness Mantra del.icio.us feed.

Here are the week’s top stories:

1. Kids Learn to ‘Red Light’ Bad Food: A weight-control program in Stanford, Calif., is helping significantly overweight kids — some as young as eight years old — understand the difference between healthy and unhealthy foods.
2. NYC officials want calories listed on menus: As part of its assault on obesity, New York City’s health department has a plan to require some restaurants to list the calorie content of their food on their menus.
3. Study: Red Wine Extract Seems to Counteract Fatty Diet: A new study of mice suggests that massive amounts of red wine extract slow the aging process, even when a high-fat, seemingly unhealthy diet is consumed.
4. Heart disease still the most likely killer: But more than 910,000 Americans still die of heart disease annually, according to the American Heart Association. And more than 70 million Americans live every day with some form of heart disease, which can include high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, stroke, angina (chest pain), heart attack and congenital heart defects.
5. Obese Kids Getting Hardened Arteries: The latest bad news is that by the time they reach their teens, obese children’s blood vessels already are hardening on the outside and thickening on the inside.
6. One for the Ages: A Prescription That May Extend Life: Calorie restriction, involves eating about 30 percent fewer calories than normal while still getting adequate amounts of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients. Aside from direct genetic manipulation, calorie restriction is the only strategy known to extend life consistently in a variety of animal species.
7. Exercise May Protect Eyesight: A new study suggests that regular exercise can reduce the risk of age-related macular degeneration macular degeneration (AMD) by up to 70%.
8. Teen Diet Isn’t All Junk Food: A walk through the food court of any mall confirms the worst reports about teens’ eating habits: Kids share overflowing cartons of french fries, bite into cheeseburgers and dripping slices of pizza, and quench their thirst with jumbo cups of soda.
9. Outside One School, Snacks Galore: Ann Squires, a nurse practitioner, says students’ eating habits are largely “horrible”: “Students’ diets consist largely of fast food, and there is an extraordinary amount of obesity.” Many students skip meals, she adds, because they don’t like what the cafeteria has to offer.
10. KFC phasing out most trans fats: The restaurant chain said it will start using zero trans fat soybean oil systemwide in the United States with the rollout expected to be completed by April 2007. KFC said many of its approximately 5,500 restaurants already have switched.
11. Slimming Down: It’s a Family Affair: Parents need to remember that “your habits are their habits,” Sandra Hassink, director of a pediatric weight management clinic says. So let your children see you snacking on a bag of carrots, rather than a bag of Fritos.

Have a great weekend!

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I am starting a weekly feature which will appear every Friday on Fitness Mantra. It is simply a review of the current week’s best health, fitness and nutrition related stories from all over the world that I am tracking using the del.icio.us bookmarking service. You can also subscribe to the Fitness Mantra del.icio.us feed separately.

Without further ado here are the week’s top stories:

1. Government to issue new guidelines for exercise: There’s a food pyramid to help guide people’s eating habits, so why not one for exercise? The government said Thursday that it would develop guidelines for physical activity.
   
2. Moderate Exercise May Lower Cold Risk: A new study shows postmenopausal women who exercised regularly lowered their risk of coming down with coldscolds compared with more sedentary women.
3. Coffee May Protect Against Diabetes: Drinking caffeinated coffee was found to reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by as much as 60% in a newly published study that included people at high risk for the disease.
   
4. Cupcake Turns 25: Dietitian Believes Trans Fat Has Kept It Together All These Years: At the beginning of Licensed Dietitian Bonnie Minsky’s career, she wanted to show school kids the difference between real and fake food. It was 1981. She purchased a Hostess Cupcake and let it sit for a few months. As she suspected, it kept its form and did not break down, unlike her apple, which started becoming spoiled in a few days. Did it ever cross her mind that the cupcake would still be in “pristine” form 25 years later? Never.
5. Trans fat warnings sought for fast food | Chicago Tribune: Big fast food chains would be required to post trans fat warnings under a measure unveiled Wednesday by Ald. Edward Burke (14th).
6. To Spend Less On Gas, Lose The Spare Tire: Americans could save enough gas to fuel 1.7 million vehicles for an entire year simply by shedding enough pounds to be as svelte as the Americans of 1960.
7. Red Wine vs. Colon Cancer: People who drink three or more glasses of red wine a week are less likely to get the abnormal colon growths that can lead to cancer, according to a new study.
8. Exercise Helps Smokers Quit: The nicotine treatment worked pretty well. Just over half of the smokers on nicotine replacement alone were able to quit. Exercise plus nicotine worked even better. Eighty percent of those who moved their butts put out their butts.
9. Staying lean may help the body to reject cancerous cells: Keeping slim may help ward off cancer, according to a study which has discovered that lean animals are better able to fight the disease than obese ones.
10. Study: Veggies could stem mental decline: Eating two or more servings of vegetables a day may slow a person’s mental decline by about 40 percent compared with a person who consumes few vegetables, according to a six-year study of nearly 4,000 Chicago residents age 65 or older.
11. Berry juice may be a heart tonic: Scientists in India have developed a way to extract juice effectively for the first time from a berry which is thought to be good for the heart.
12. Studies: College Kids Packing on Pounds: The “Freshman 15″ is more like 5 to 7, but it is followed by the “Sophomore 2 or 3,” say researchers who led two of the largest and longest studies ever done of weight gain among college students.
13. Chefs not counting calories, study finds: A survey of 300 restaurant chefs around the country reveals that taste, looks and customer expectations are what matter when they determine portion size. Only one in six said the calorie content was very important and half said it didn’t matter at all.

If you missed any of these stories during the week, now through the weekend is a great time to catch up and be in the know. Look for this feature every Friday!

Knowledge is power, especially in the world of fitness.

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