Lilia Smelkova, Food Day (10/24/2014) Campaign Manager, is reporting school lunches are improving! “This is due to the groundbreaking Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 which set nutrition and health standards for school food.”
Check out the new UDSA Smart Snacks guidelines too!
Lisa Says: the article this week in the NY Times about this extensive mammogram study’s results gives us more information to make a truly educated decision on how we choose to manage our health. Without intimidation or propganda. Enjoy the Article:
Vast Study Casts Doubts on Value of Mammograms
by GINA KOLATA Feb. 11, 2014 New York Times
One of the largest and most meticulous studies of mammography ever done, involving 90,000 women and lasting a quarter-century, has added powerful new doubts about the value of the screening test for women of any age.
It found that the death rates from breast cancer and from all causes were the same in women who got mammograms and those who did not. And the screening had harms: One in five cancers found with mammography and treated was not a threat to the woman’s health and did not need treatment such as chemotherapy, surgery or radiation. Continue reading
Lisa Says: This was a compelling article from WorldTruth.TV forwarded by Dr. Kim Balas, NP. When the carrots are given a chlorine bath, it doesn’t have to be listed because it’s part of manufaturing and not considerend an ingredient. Read on…
Why Baby Carrots Are Killing You
Source: Angela Garrison thealternativedaily
What could I possibly have against these cute little “healthy” snacks that can be found in school lunchboxes across America? It’s back to school time and baby carrots are one snack to keep out of your child’s lunch.
It may shock you that baby carrots do not come out of the ground that way. There is no little baby carrot garden where these are harvested. Manufactured baby carrots are a result of taking all the broken and “ugly” big carrots they can’t put in the package, grinding them all up, processing them into the “baby” carrots and giving them a bath in chlorine to give them a bright happy orange color. There are also “Cut & Peel” baby carrots that are whittled into a miniature form. Continue reading
Lisa Says: Sabrina Tavernise’s NY Times article detailing how those immigrating to the US adopt poor health habits and carve years off their lives, their children’s lives. Once again, this reveals health is fundamentally about life style not genetics. Lifestyle drives genetic expression, for health or disease, as Dr. Ornish’s research has shown. Enjoy the article.
The Health Toll of Immigration
BROWNSVILLE, Tex. — Becoming an American can be bad for your health.
A growing body of mortality research on immigrants has shown that the longer they live in this country, the worse their rates of heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. And while their American-born children may have more money, they tend to live shorter lives than the parents.
The pattern goes against any notion that moving to America improves every aspect of life. It also demonstrates that at least in terms of health, worries about assimilation for the country’s 11 million illegal immigrants are mistaken. In fact, it is happening all too quickly.
photo by J. Michael Short for The New York Times
Esther Angeles, 41, with her daughter, Johanna Marisol Gomez, 7. Ms. Angeles has developed diabetes since coming to the United States and struggles to see that her daughter eats healthfully. Continue reading
Lisa Says: This article was published last year in Psychology Today and offers compelling information as to the wildly different rates of ADHD from America (9%) to France (0.5%), and the different approaches used. Food for thought.
French children don’t need medications to control their behavior. Published on March 8, 2012 by Marilyn Wedge, Ph.D. in Suffer the Children
In the United States, at least 9% of school-aged children have been diagnosed with ADHD, and are taking pharmaceutical medications. In France, the percentage of kids diagnosed and medicated for ADHD is less than .5%. How come the epidemic of ADHD—which has become firmly established in the United States—has almost completely passed over children in France?
Is ADHD a biological-neurological disorder? Surprisingly, the answer to this question depends on whether you live in France or in the United States. In the United States, child psychiatrists consider ADHD to be a biological disorder with biological causes. The preferred treatment is also biological–psycho stimulant medications such as Ritalin and Adderall.
French child psychiatrists, on the other hand, view ADHD as a medical condition that has psycho-social and situational causes. Instead of treating children’s focusing and behavioral problems with drugs, French doctors prefer to look for the underlying issue that is causing the child distress—not in the child’s brain but in the child’s social context. They then choose to treat the underlying social context problem with psychotherapy or family counseling. This is a very different way of seeing things from the American tendency to attribute all symptoms to a biological dysfunction such as a chemical imbalance in the child’s brain. Continue reading
Lisa Says: good article from the Wall Street Journal showing yet more research showing for those already diagnosed with heart disease a diet with “the highest intakes of fruit, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and a higher intake of fish relative to meat poultry and eggs—were 35% less likely to die from a repeat heart attack or stroke”. Enjoy.
Patients with heart disease frequently assume that medication is enough to forestall a repeat heart attack or stroke, but a large new study shows the preventive power of a healthy diet.
The findings from a report, released Monday, looked at the impact of diet in addition to the medicines routinely used to treat cardiovascular disease. Although it is widely accepted that healthy diets are powerful tools to prevent cardiovascular disease, less is known about the impact of diet on people who already have the disease.
People with the healthiest diets—those with the highest intakes of fruit, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and a higher intake of fish relative to meat poultry and eggs—were 35% less likely to die from a repeat heart attack or stroke during the length of the study, compared with those with the least healthy diets, according to the five-year study of 32,000 people in 40 countries.
They also were 28% less likely to develop congestive heart failure, 14% less likely to have an additional heart attack and 19% less likely to have a stroke. (link to rest of article) Continue reading
Lisa Says: Really clear article from Princeton on their research of High Fructose Corn Syrup, how it differs from other forms of sugar, and how it affects the body differently. Enjoy.
Posted March 22, 2010; 10:00 a.m.by Hilary Parker
A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.
In addition to causing significant weight gain in lab animals, long-term consumption of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides. The researchers say the work sheds light on the factors contributing to obesity trends in the United States.
A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.
In addition to causing significant weight gain in lab animals, long-term consumption of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides. The researchers say the work sheds light on the factors contributing to obesity trends in the United States.
Continue reading
Lisa Says: Good info on the amazing benefits of breast feeding over formula for both baby and mom, then touches on what to do if issues occur or when it may not be advisable. Enjoy the article:
Breastfeeding: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
What Is Breastfeeding?
Breastfeeding, also called nursing, can be an easy and inexpensive way for a mother to feed her child.
According to the Policy Statement on Breastfeeding from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), women who don’t have health problems should exclusively breastfeed their infants for at least the first six months of life. The AAP also suggests that women try to breastfeed for the first 12 months of life because of the benefits to both the mother and baby.
What Is Breastfeeding?
Breastfeeding, also called nursing, can be an easy and inexpensive way for a mother to feed her child.
According to the Policy Statement on Breastfeeding from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), women who don’t have health problems should exclusively breastfeed their infants for at least the first six months of life. The AAP also suggests that women try to breastfeed for the first 12 months of life because of the benefits to both the mother and baby. Continue reading
Lisa Says: Comprehensive article from Harvard Medical School on multiple concerns with chemical or artifical sweeteners. One part quite compelling was not just concern over safety, but, “daily consumption of diet drinks was associated with a 36% greater risk for metabolic syndrome and a 67% increased risk for type 2 diabetes. Aren’t these diseases that artificial sweeteners may help prevent in the first place?” Enjoy the article.
Artificial sweeteners: sugar-free, but at what cost?
Posted July 16, 2012, 1:28 pm Holly Strawbridge, Executive Editor, Harvard Heart Letter
By offering the taste of sweetness without any calories, artificial sweeteners seem like they could be one answer to effective weight loss. The average 12-ounce can of sugar-sweetened soda delivers about 150 calories, almost all of them from sugar. The same amount of diet soda—zero calories. The choice seems like a no-brainer.
The American Heart Association (AHA) and American Diabetes Association (ADA) have given a cautious nod to the use of artificial sweeteners in place of sugar to combat obesity, metabolic syndrome, and diabetes, all risk factors for heart disease. (You can read the full statement here.)
“While they are not magic bullets, smart use of non-nutritive sweeteners could help you reduce added sugars in your diet, therefore lowering the number of calories you eat. Reducing calories could help you attain and maintain a healthy body weight, and thereby lower your risk of heart disease and diabetes,” said Dr. Christopher Gardner, an associate professor of medicine at Stanford University in California, in a press release accompanying the scientific statement.
As with everything, there’s more to the artificial sweetener story than their effect on weight. To learn more about them, I spoke with Dr. David Ludwig, an obesity and weight-loss specialist at Harvard-affiliated Boston Children’s Hospital. He has a keen interest in products designed to help people lose weight at keep it off. And what he has learned about artificial sweeteners worries him.
Lisa Says: Great tips from Berkely’s Farmers Market on how to extend the life of your produce safely.
Here are storage tips from the Berkeley Farmers Market. Take a look at these ideas for creative and waste-free ways to extend the life of your produce, in and out of the refrigerator.
