Tag Archives: obesity

Weekly Round Up, 10.26.12

Good Bacteria

Here are some of the best food stories we came across this week:

  • Could Prebiotics Be Healthier Than Probiotics? – Consumers and doctors tend to think all probiotics and prebiotics are beneficial, but it’s becoming clear that they have different effects. Could prebiotics, the food for the good bacteria known as probiotics, have more benefits than a dose of the microbes, particularly for people with serious health problems like preemies? Baby formula manufacturers have started adding prebiotics. Continue reading →

Weekly Round Up, 10.19.12

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Here are some of the best food stories we came across this week:

  • Whole Foods Tests Color-Coded Labels Indicating Healthfulness – Whole Foods is testing a color-coding system designed to inform consumers whether the product they’re buying is healthful, with green stickers that progress to yellow and orange. Unhealthy foods will not receive a label. The criteria includes: sugars and sweeteners, sodium, whole grains/level of grain processing, animal product content, percentage of calories from saturated fat, and calorie density.
  • Will Farming’s Future Be Found in Cities? – A host of vertical farms — urban greenhouses that unfurl upward instead of horizontally on land — are up and running in the U.S. and overseas, providing fresh produce and reducing emissions. There’s a 12-story building going up in Sweden, where plants will travel on tracks from the top floor to the bottom. In Chicago there’s The Plant, a former slaughterhouse where vegetables grow on floating rafts, nourished by waste from nearby fish tanks. Continue reading →

Weekly Round Up, 10.12.12

Cacao Beans

Here are some of the best food stories we came across this week:

  • Readers of Food Labels Weigh Less – A U.S. National Health Interview Survey of 25,000 people found that those who reported scrutinizing labels while grocery shopping had lower body mass indexes and weights than those who paid less attention to what was in their food; the difference was especially pronounced for women. Living in urban areas, being college educated and married increased the likelihood of reading nutrition labels.
  • National Chocolate Consumption Tied to Nobel Prize Odds – Don’t eat it just for the antioxidants: It turns out the higher a country’s chocolate consumption, the more Nobel laureates it spawns per capita, according to findings released today in the New England Journal of Medicine. The Swiss have won the most, followed by the Swedes. The Swiss average 120, 3-ounce bars for every man, woman and child, per year, or one bar about every three days. No word on if hot cocoa counts. Continue reading →

Weekly Round Up, 10.5.12

Natural Foods

Here are some of the best food stories we came across this week:

  • Take the October Unprocessed (Food) Challenge – Popular food blogger Andrew Wilder of Eating Rules! hosts a challenge for his readers each October: Can they eschew processed foods for one whole month? The parameters are flexible and forgiving instead of rigid; past participants have reported feeling better physically and becoming more conscious of their food choices.
  • Trader Joe’s is Focus of Antibiotic-Free Meat Campaign – The Meat Without Drugs campaign set its sights on Trader Joe’s, the innovative grocer known for its affordable gourmet foods and fair business practices. The national retailer already sells some antibiotic-free meats, prompting the campaign to encourage TJ’s to sell only drug-free. Over 500,000 people have signed a petition urging the chain to make the switch. Continue reading →

Weekly Round Up, 9.21.12

Healthy School Lunch Fights Obesity

Here are some of the best food stories we came across this week:

  • Billionaire Philanthropists Fund Massive Nutrition Science Initiative – 38-year-old hedge fund manager John Arnold, with his wife Laura, put $5 million in seed money towards the Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSI), whose lofty goals are to perform scientifically valid studies to discover what truly causes obesity and thus reduce the U.S. obesity rate from its current 35% to 15%, and reduce diabetes incidence from 8% to 2%, all by 2020. Continue reading →

Weekly Round Up, 9.14.12

Farewell large soda

Here are some of the best food stories we came across this week:

  • It’s Official: NYC Health Panel Bans Big Sodas – The New York City Board of Health approved a ban on the sale of large sodas and other sugary drinks at restaurants, street carts and movie theaters on Thursday – the first restriction of its kind in the country – in an effort to reduce skyrocketing obesity rates. Convenience stores, vending machines and some newsstands would be exempt.
  • Greater Variety Increases Vegetable Intake – A study performed at Penn State and published in the August issue of Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics found that when participants were served three different vegetables that filled up half their plate, both men and women ate over one half-serving more than when served only one veggie — even when it was their favorite. Continue reading →

Weekly Round Up, 8.24.12

Waste Not Want Not

Here are some of the best food stories we came across this week:

  • Study Finds Americans Waste Up to 40% of Their Food – A new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council found that American trash up to 40% of the nation’s food supply every year, which creates the largest amount of solid waste in landfills. The study found the average family of four wastes about 20 pounds of food per person per month, and about $2,275 per year.
  • Lawyers That Took on Tobacco Now Targeting Big Food – Attorneys who won millions of dollars in record class action settlements against the tobacco industry have turned their sites on Big Agribusiness. In the last four months a dozen of those lawyers have filed 25 cases against ConAgra, Monsanto, General Mills, PepsiCo, Heinz and Chobani, claiming that the companies have wrongly labeled ingredients and products in violation of federal regulations.
  • New Scanner App Gives Gluten-free, Dietary Alerts – Fooducate has come out with a new smartphone app that scans barcodes on packaged foods; users can choose up to three alerts that will warn them if products contain gluten, peanuts, eggs, soy, tree nuts, fish, shellfish or milk. It also informs gluten-free users if the food was processed in a facility with gluten. The app costs $4.99.
  • Kids State Dinner at White House Celebrates Healthy Eaters – First Lady Michelle Obama, as part of her Let’s Move! initiative, hosted a State Dinner — well, luncheon — to honor the 54 kids (and their folks) from each state and territory who won the contest to develop a healthy, delicious recipe. (The link above includes the free cookbook.) The President dropped in to say hello. The menu included kale chips, a corn, bean and quinoa salad, and fruit smoothies.
  • “Good Food on a Tight Budget” Guide Helps Families – The Environmental Working Group reviewed government surveys and tests for nearly 1,200 foods, then factored in prices, nutrients, pesticides, environmental pollutants and artificial ingredients, and chose the best 100+ foods for their guide. The site also includes tools for tracking food prices, plus menu planning and shopping list tools.

What did we miss? Let us know in the comments below, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter for links like these all week long.

Photo courtesy of goblinbox.

No Excuses: NatureBox Brings Healthy Snacks to You

NatureBox

No matter how good we are about healthy meals, it’s the snacks that often suck us back down into the dark world of preservatives and artificial flavors. That 3 o’clock lull hits, or the kids need something after their summer swim and the cheese puffs are right there!

NatureBox takes the effort out of finding healthy alternatives with a carton full of treats delivered right to your door. The company believes snacks are a landscape of eating too often ignored, so sources munchies that are nutritionist-approved, as well as preservative-free and as organic as possible. Without trans-fats, artificial sweeteners or high fructose corn syrup, NatureBox’s snacks ensures a pick-me-up stays that way — no one suffers the sugar crash associated with the junk we munch on when we think it doesn’t matter. Continue reading →

Weekly Round Up, 8.10.12

School Lunch

Here are some of the best food stories we came across this week:

  • Drinking Soda May Permanently Affect Metabolism – A study published by Bangor University in England found that drinking soda impacts not only the drinker’s immediate health, but that the body responds to the added sugar by processing calories less efficiently. The soda interferes with the body’s ability to burn fat and cope with rises in blood sugar, and leads to muscles burning sugars over fats, with negative implications for long-term health. Continue reading →

Weekly Round Up, 8.3.12

Maine Lobstah

Here are some of the best food stories we came across this week:

  • Lobsters Swim North Due to Ocean Warming – The seas are following the climate as global temperatures continue to rise, and this has led to a shift in American lobster habitats. These crustaceans’ locale is closely linked to the temperature of the ocean floor; in the last several years, lobsters in the Atlantic have been migrating north in search of cooler waters. There is also evidence linking rising seawater temperatures to a spread in a lobster shell disease. Continue reading →