LA study links obesity and poverty

Health officials in Los Angeles County say that children who live in wealthy neighborhoods close to city parks are less likely to be obese than are kids who live in poorer neighborhoods without access to green space. The county Department of Public Health used data from the Department of Education as well as unemployment rates, education levels, household income data and park locations to determine that there are more obese children in the cities with more low-income residents…

Stations set to lose big on ad ban

British broadcasters say a proposed 9 p.m. watershed for junk food advertising would cost them 250 million pounds a year in lost revenues. The Advertising Association is working on raising money for a campaign to stop the government’s fight against advertisers. The group says the government is going after advertisers to show they’re doing something about childhood obesity, but the real result will be less quality programming as stations lose money…

Sleep deprivation linked to moms’ weight gain

A study from the American Journal of Epidemiology says that new moms who were sleeping less than five hours a night when their babies were six months old had a better chance of retaining 11 pounds or more of their weight gain than did moms who got seven hours of sleep or more. Those who got the least sleep were three times more likely to keep on the pounds, and moms who got less sleep at a year than they did at six months were twice as likely as other moms to keep the weight on. Sleeping less has been linked to obesity, coronary heart disease and diabetes in women, experts say…

Picking healthy food for Fido

If you’ve ever wondered about the calorie counts of dog food, look no further than TikiPups. This site has a list of more than 125 types of dog food and their calorie counts per cup. This will let you know, for example, that if you’re trying to get your dog to lose weight, feeding it Eukanuba Small Breed Adult (457 calories per cup) or Purina Pro Plan Performance (493 calories) is probably a bad idea…

The trouble with faux sugar

Americans and others around the world are consuming tons of fake sweeteners, but it’s not really known what the health effects of these substances might be. These manufactured chemicals are sweeter than sugar so less is needed, some of them aren’t even digested, and they don’t raise insulin levels, which makes them popular with diabetics. But studies have also linked some sweeteners to health problems, and some studies have shown that people who drink diet sodas may not be doing their diets any good…

Fast food for thought

Finally, if you missed last night’s “60 Minutes”, there was an interesting report on how posting nutritional information would work in the real world. Leslie Stahl finds that menu boards like those at Subway that have nutritional information posted aren’t complete, and customizing meals makes posting complete counts nearly impossible. Experts aren’t sure that posting calorie counts will make people eat less, but they hope restaurants will be ashamed by the number of calories in some meals and will make their meals healthier.

(By Sarah White for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 19th, 2007 and is filed under Nibbles: diet news shorts. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. Permalink.