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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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).
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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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