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.
SuperBowl Sunday again! How quickly a year passes! Last year, you read some eating tips for the big game, but some things don’t change during this time of the year. Manning is still the last name of one of the Quarterbacks (last year, Peyton led the Colts to victory - can baby brother Eli do the same thing for the Giants as they take on the Patriots this year?) and SuperBowl Sunday is still the second biggest day of wanton consumption (right behind Thanksgiving Day).
Of course, the eating tips we read last year are absolutely valid even today, but there are a couple of articles with interesting takes on fitness and nutrition before and during the game that warrant our brief attention before we charge off to view the game.
Firstly, Super Bowl shape-up: Get your game on! advises us to start off the day with a little activity ourselves so we get our exercise for the day while having fun doing it. A backyard game of flag football, apparently, does the trick quite well:
Get your buddies together, put on your favorite team jerseys and play some good old-fashioned flag football in the yard. A 150-pound person can burn an average of 576 calories per hour this way! [MSNBC Fit List]
Eat this, not that! 7 Super Bowl swaps meanwhile gives us the ever-useful Eat-This-Not-That take on Super Bowl eating. It starts off with a scary tidbit of information that can be quite unsettling: Americans, it seems, consume about 156 billion calories today! Just follow the pages of simple substitutions of low-calorie swaps for their higher-calorie cousins and you should be just fine by the time it’s the fourth quarter. For example at half-time, having 3 chicken fingers instead of cheese-fries with ranch will give you just half the calories and just a third of fat!
Go Patriots!
Here are the week’s top health and fitness stories:
- Super Bowl excitement may hike heart attacks: For die-hard fans of the New York Giants and New England Patriots, this Sunday’s Super Bowl won’t be just a game. It may be a health hazard.
- Good food ‘boosts earning power’: Giving babies nutritious food could significantly increase their earning power as adults, new research suggests.
- You call that health food?: Take a moment and consider this logic: 1. Fat-free foods are healthy. 2. Skittles are fat-free. 3. Therefore, Skittles are healthy.
- Eating red may prevent dropping dead: Eating red fruits and vegetables may help reduce inflammation which in turn cuts the risk of heart attack, a U.S. doctor says.
- Eat this, not that! 7 Super Bowl swaps: By the time the final whistle blows at Super Bowl XLII, Americans will have downed 156 billion calories, mostly from pizza, wings, and beer, the unholy trinity of pigskin comestibles.
- It’s February. How’s that diet coming?: It’s now one month into 2008, and your eating habits may have veered a bit off course. But it’s not too late - just a few small changes can make all the difference.
- Va. Senate Backs Phaseout of Trans Fats in School Food: The Virginia Senate voted unanimously Tuesday to phase out the use of artery-clogging trans fats in food sold at public schools, from the cheese pizza in the cafeteria to the chips in the vending machine.
- Super Bowl shape-up: Get your game on!: … choose the right snacks so you can stay “in the game.” Replace regular chips with baked versions, regular beer with lite beer, thick pizza crust with thin.
- Obesity drug use rises eight-fold: More than 1m prescriptions are made for obesity drugs a year - eight times the number dispensed seven years ago.
- Inmate discipline faces diet test: A £1.4m study of 1,000 inmates at three young offenders institutions will look at the effect on behaviour of vitamins and other nutritional supplements.
- Cooking schools targeting trans fats from foods: The movement to ban artery-clogging trans fats from food has a new venue: cooking schools.
- Sedentary life ‘speeds up ageing’: Leading a sedentary lifestyle may make us genetically old before our time, a study suggests.
- EU health chief wants food labels to fight fat: The European Union’s health chief wants to introduce tougher food labeling rules to combat the growing problem of obesity across Europe, but is facing stiff political and industrial opposition.
- Warm-Up Advice From an Ancient Master: We’ve all heard Confucius’s aphorism about the journey of a thousand miles. What I want to know is: Did he actually ever try taking that first step?
- Diabetes Rates Continue to Soar: The number of Americans being diagnosed with and also living with type 2 diabetes is soaring, presenting a major health and economic crisis for the United States, a new study reports.
- One Size Does Not Fit All: So how does a young guy seemingly in good health suddenly become such a medical train wreck?
- Carrots Are Good for Losing Weight: Study after study shows that doctors are often uncomfortable in telling their patients that they need to lose weight.
- Coffee may make diabetes worse: Daily consumption of caffeine in coffee, tea or soft drinks increases blood sugar levels for people with type 2 diabetes, research suggests.
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Have a great weekend!
[tags]health, fitness, health news, fitness news, health links, fitness links, del.icio.us[/tags]
