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If you were reading me in January, you might remember how shocked I was by a claim (one of many false claims) that President Barack Obama made in his state of the union speech. I wrote, “If The President Can Credit Michelle Obama With Lowering Childhood Obesity, Then He can Get Away With Anything.”

Gov't Spending $4.8M to Tell Students to 'Get Fruved' March 17, 2014 - 9:13 AM By Eric Scheiner (CNSNews.com) - If a college student dressed up as a giant bunch of grapes jumped out of the shadows and told you to "get fruved," what could you possibly say? The University of Tennessee-Knoxville is getting more than $4.8 million taxpayer dollars to develop a healthy-eating campaign that has students -- dressed up as fruits and vegetables -- cavorting in the hallways of higher education. Getting "fruved" means you're eating your FRUits and VEgetables. Get it? The USDA’s National Institute of Food...

It won't be nearly as much fun as eating candy bars, but a big study is being launched to see if pills containing the nutrients in dark chocolate can help prevent heart attacks and strokes. The pills are so packed with nutrients that you'd have to eat countless candy bars to get the amount being tested in this study, which will enroll 18,000 men and women across the U.S. ``People eat chocolate because they enjoy it,'' not because they think it's good for them, and the idea of the study is to see whether there are health benefits from chocolate's...

A doughnut shop chain won't be selling doughnuts at a new Massachusetts location. Quincy's licensing board this week approved a plan for Honey Dew Donuts to open a shop inside the city's new $30 million YMCA. Sara Trubiano, YMCA spokeswoman tells The Patriot Ledger that the elimination of the sweet treat fit with the the Y's focus on physical fitness. “It’s definitely tailored to the healthy lifestyle the Y supports,” she said.

Researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden have performed the first study on humans that demonstrates how food's fat composition determines where fat will be stored in the body. Findings of the small, preliminary study suggest that polyunsaturated fat -- found in olive oil, nuts and seeds and oily fish-- seems to keep fat away from the abdomen and liver. Published in the American Diabetes Association journal Diabetes, the study focused on 39 young, healthy adult men and women, all of whom ate an extra 750 calories per day for seven weeks. Extra calories were consumed via high-fat muffins baked by...

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is asking the Obama administration to scale back draft regulations under ObamaCare that would force restaurants to post nutritional information on their menus. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is close to finalizing a rule requiring calorie labels on vending machines and at restaurants and “similar retail food establishments.” Proposed in 2011, the regulations stem from the Affordable Care Act and are designed to combat obesity by helping consumers make healthier choices.But the group of 24 lawmakers said the draft regulations, which apply to restaurants with 20 or more locations, go beyond Congress’ intent and...

The Food and Drug Administration is laying out new requirements to ensure the safety of infant formula. The rules announced Thursday are designed to make sure that formula manufacturers test their products for salmonella and other pathogens before they are distributed. They would also require formula companies to include specific nutrients, including proteins, fats and vitamins.

Health organizations and U.S. nutrition experts say they are calling on fast-food restaurant chains to take sugary drinks off their children's menus. Margo G. Wootan, nutrition policy director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said McDonald's agreed to drop soda and sugary drinks from Happy Meal menus last year, and 100 U.S. and local health organizations along with nutritional experts said in a letter to Wendy's, Burger King and 21 other restaurant chains that they too should remove the items from their children's menus. Subway, Chipotle, Arby's and Panera already exclude sugary drinks from kids' meals. "With...

<p>Governments could slow or even reverse the growing obesity epidemic if they introduced more regulation into the global market for fast foods such as burgers, chips and fizzy drinks, researchers said on Monday.</p> <p>A study published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization (WHO) suggested that if governments took firmer action, they could start to prevent people becoming overweight and obese - conditions with serious long-term consequences such as diabetes, heart diseases and cancer.</p>

Sugar vs fat: Chris and Xand Van Tulleken, both 35, spent a month following restrictive fad diets to see if one food group is behind the obesity epidemic.Is a high-fat, low-carb diet better for you than a high-carb, low-fat one? A pair of British brothers set out to end the fat versus sugar debate. Alexander (Xand) Van Tulleken, a senior fellow at the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs at Fordham University in New York, and Chris Van Tulleken, a physician at University College Hospital, London, each agreed to stick to a specific diet for one month. Chris followed a super-low-fat...

Processed food NOT fat is the real cause of heart disease, claims heart surgeon who says a diet of natural food can even reverse the illness Dr. Dwight Lundell admits prescribing cholesterol-lowering medications, and a low-fat, high-simple carbohydrate diet for two-and-a-half decades was misguided 'These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible,' he writes in an essay that has ignited the Internet He vlaims these foods actively destroy the walls of our blood vessels by causing chronic inflammation, which in turn causes heart disease The cardiac surgeon recommends only eating foods your grandmother, or great-grandmother, would recognise An Arizona...

A proposed Maryland bill would restore the right of the states’ citizens to participate in cow shares, or cow boarding, to obtain raw milk. Maryland citizens lost the right to raw milk via cow shares in 2006, when the appointed director of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene redefined the word “sale” to include agistments. A hearing on the bill is scheduled for January 28 at 1:00pm at the Lowe House Office Building in Annapolis. Cow shares or cow boarding refers to a practice in which people buy shares in individual animals for a portion of the milk...

(Colo, IA) A teacher in Colo, Iowa, decided to eat only at McDonald’s for 90 days to see what it would do to his health. The result turned out to be a good lesson for him and his students. “I can eat any food at McDonald’s I want as long as I’m smart for the rest of the day with what I balance it out with,” said science teacher John Cisna said That was the theory Cisna laid out for three of his students at Colo-Nesco high school this past fall. Ninety days of Mickey D’s for breakfast, lunch and...

Would you rather sip on unpasteurized milk or a cold glass of soda? Do you prefer Saturday lunch at a fast food joint or a farmers market? Regardless of your choices, your food freedom -- your right to grow, raise, produce, buy, sell, share, cook, eat, and drink the foods you want -- is under attack. Here are ten food freedom issues to keep an eye on in 2014. 1: FDA May Ban or Restrict a Growing Number of Food Ingredients. The FDA has proposed banning oils containing trans fats, an ingredient found in foods like coffee creamers and muffins....

One child had a BMI measurement of 35, which for a six-foot man would mean weighing 19st. Britain's obesity epidemic, which sees NHS hospitals dealing with 1,000 cases every day, is a reversal of the traditional problem when children were undernourished. Increasingly social workers find youngsters being fed a high-fat, sugary diet, which can be just as bad for their health. The phenomenon is known as "killing with kindness" because the child craves the unhealthy food and a loving parent feels unable to say no. Professionals say they have to make complex decisions in care proceedings and a family's gross...

<p>McDonald’s has some healthy advice for its workers – don’t eat at McDonald’s.</p> <p>The fast-food behemoth recently posted the jaw-dropping tip on its Web site for employees, warning that the very same burgers and fries they sling for their legions of customers are hazardous to their health.</p>

Q uestions about the health benefits of vitamin supplements have been percolating in the medical establishment for decades — even as the multivitamin industry has grown to a multi-billion powerhouse in the U.S. This week, the respected journal the Annals of Internal Medicine put its well-heeled foot down. "We believe that the case is closed — supplementing the diet of well-nourished adults with (most) mineral or vitamin supplements has no clear benefit and might even be harmful," the journal said in an editorial. "These vitamins should not be used for chronic disease prevention. Enough is enough." Here's Dr. Edgar Miller...

The National Institutes of Health is spending over $224,000 to study how to introduce healthy child menus in an effort to alter the “ordering behavior” of kids in restaurants. A research project awarded on Nov. 26 to San Diego State University will attempt a “restaurant-based intervention,” coupled with a marketing campaign aimed at children to fight obesity. The school has been given $224,250 for an “exploratory intervention” study that will specifically target Latino children, which the researchers say have the highest rates of obesity. The project will first observe children’s “menu ordering and consumption behaviors” in 12 restaurants, followed by...

According to the Obama White House, the first family consumed a Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, honey-baked ham, cornbread stuffing, oyster stuffing, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, greens, green bean casserole, dinner rolls and macaroni and cheese.Then, the family washed all that down with nine kinds of pies: huckleberry, pecan, sweet potato, peach, apple, pumpkin, banana cream, coconut cream and chocolate cream.For years now First Lady Michelle Obama has been pushing her program called "Let's Move" for more exercise and better foods. She wants Americans to eat healthier, homemakers and schools to prepare her healthier recommended meals and to require restaurants to...

The disease-fighting punch of green tea is largely due to its high concentration of epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), a substance with more antioxidant activity than vitamins C and E and other nutritional heavyweights. The other side of the green tea story: Even if you are consuming green tea, the truth is that you might not be getting what you pay for. Some bottled green teas and even green tea supplements contain only trace amounts of EGCG. Meanwhile, the amount of EGCG in other green tea–based products can vary by more than 240%. These and other findings, from the scientists at ConsumerLab.com,...