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You don’t have to spend much time with teenagers to know that the average adolescent would rather devote an afternoon to sitting in front of the TV, computer or video-game console than working out in a gym. And in recent years, as physical-education classes have been progressively cut from cash-strapped public-school curriculums, teens have had even more time to lounge, slouch, hang out or do anything but break a sweat.

It’s no surprise, then, that obesity rates among U.S. youngsters have skyrocketed, tripling from 1976 to 2004. Public-health experts and obesity researchers attribute the trend in part to kids’ increasingly sedentary lifestyles. As teens spend more and more time anchored before a screen — burning fewer and fewer calories each day — they’re storing more of that unused energy as fat. Hence, the ballooning rates of obesity. (See TIME’s video “Obesity and Social Networks.”)

That’s precisely why the findings of a new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health came as such a surprise. The report, published last week in the journal Obesity Reviews, finds that the amount of physical activity among U.S. teens has not in fact changed significantly over the past two decades, even while that population has gotten heavier.

“On the one hand, we have seen the obesity-prevalence increase, but we don’t see a decrease in physical activity,” says Dr. Youfa Wang, an associate professor at the Center for Human Nutrition at Hopkins and lead author of the study. “This suggests that physical activity is not a good explanation for the increase in prevalence of obesity.”

In simple terms, body weight is a reflection of the balance between two variables: the calories a body takes in and the calories it burns off. As far as the average U.S. teen is concerned, the study suggests, the culprit behind weight gain is not a decrease in exercise but an increase in consumption.

Of course, that doesn’t mean teens are getting adequate exercise: Wang analyzed data from nearly 16,000 high school students between the ages of 15 and 18, who took part in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s longitudinal Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey, about their physical activity. He and his team found that in 2007, only 34.7% of teens met federal physical activity recommendations, which call for activity strenuous enough to cause heavy breathing for a total of an hour a day for five or more days a week. (See nine kid foods to avoid.)

But the survey also found that teens’ overall rate of daily exercise had not changed much since 1991, when the study sample was first asked to report their participation in gym classes in school and their level of physical activity at home. The percentage of teens attending daily gym class has stayed relatively steady since 1991; on average, the yearly change in the proportion of students participating was less than 1%.

The percentage of ninth- through 12th-graders getting adequate levels of moderate physical activity — exercise such as slow bicycling, fast walking or pushing a lawn mower, which did not make participants break a sweat — also changed very little, from 26.7% in 1999 to 26.5% in 2005, the latest year for which the data was available. Yet obesity rates continued to rise.

So does this mean that exercise isn’t important in controlling weight? As tempting as that conclusion might be, Wang and other health experts say that’s not exactly what the new data show. The findings may say less about the role of exercise by itself than about the other variable in the weight equation — diet — and the interaction of the two. While exercise may not contribute directly to weight loss, it is critical for maintaining a healthy weight, since it helps calibrate the balance between energy taken in and energy burned off.

“The data is too gross, and too general to assume that [exercise doesn't count],” warns Dr. Janet Walberg Rankin, a professor in the department of human nutrition, foods and exercise at Virginia Tech. “We need to have a dual approach to weight involving both activity and diet. I would hate for people to take away from this study that activity has nothing to do with weight.” (See pictures of what makes you eat more food.)

Rankin points out that even small changes in a person’s energy balance can have a significant effect on weight. Studies have shown that eating just 10 to 20 extra calories per day — that’s one peanut M&M or one tortilla chip — that don’t get burned through activity can result in a 2-lb. gain on average over the course of a year. “But none of the methods we have now are accurate enough to pick that up,” says Rankin.

She advises people to take the new data with, well, a grain of salt. The information was collected by asking participants to self-report their exercise habits, which is a notoriously unreliable method — people are not very good at gauging their activity accurately. Add to that the fact that questionnaires are not refined enough to pick up small changes in people’s energy intake and expenditure, and it’s obvious why the findings are informative but not game-changing. “These data are useful in highlighting who should be targeted — the most difficult cases,” says Rankin. In the new study, that group includes African-American girls, who got the least amount of exercise among all adolescent groups.

Still, the study highlighted some encouraging trends. For instance, the percentage of teens who spent more than three hours a day in front of the TV dropped from 1999 to 2007, from 43% to 35%. While Wang acknowledges that students may simply be substituting computer or other sedentary screen time for television-viewing, he notes that it’s still a trend in the right direction. Far from being an excuse not to exercise, Wang sees the data as a wake-up call for parents and teens.

“The important message is that compared to the recommendations for physical activity, the physical activity of American adolescents is still at a very low level,” says Wang. “We still need to make a greater effort to promote physical activity. Even if it does not explain obesity, it has many other beneficial effects.”

The Food and Drug Administration is moving toward a more active role in seeing that packaged food consumers have accurate, adequate nutrition labels to guide purchasing decisions.

Please read this article by Andrea Thompson of LiveScience.com – FDA cracks down on defective nutrition labels

If you’d be willing to participate in a simple, 10-question study about how consumers evaluate nutrition labels, please click this link to provide contact information and we’ll send you the survey form.

Thanks for making a difference in your world.

Cancer is becoming more prevalent in our society. You’ve not just read about it, but you’ve seen it among those you know or perhaps experienced it yourself.

It’s tough news to hear even in the best of circumstances. But this article might provide a boost to your commitment to battle the affliction, whether personally or vicariously — Lori Drummond, R.D., L.D..

Dr. Dean Ornish and other research physicians recently published a randomized controlled trial showing that the progression of early-stage prostate cancer may be stopped or perhaps even reversed by making similar changes in diet and lifestyle.

This was the first randomized controlled trial showing that the progression of any type of cancer may be modified just by changing what we eat and how we live. What’s true for prostate cancer may be true for breast cancer as well.

Recent studies by the Preventive Medicine Research Institute continue to show how dynamically lifestyle changes can improve our health and well-being, even on a genetic and cellular level.

In November 2008, The Lancet Oncology published PMRI’s study showing that changing lifestyle significantly increases telomerase and, thus, telomere length. Telomeres are the ends of our chromosomes that control how long we live.

As your telomeres get longer, your life gets longer. This is the first time that any intervention, even drugs, has been shown to significantly increase telomerase.

This is the same cohort of patients reported changes in gene expression in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in May 2008. After only three months, over 500 genes were beneficially affected—upregulating (“turning on”) disease-preventing genes, and downregulating (“turning off”) genes that promote cancer, heart disease, inflammation, and other illnesses.

This is the first time that comprehensive lifestyle changes have been shown to beneficially affect gene expression in men with prostate cancer.

These studies show how powerful comprehensive lifestyle changes can be, how dynamic these mechanisms are, and how quickly benefits may occur. It’s not all in our genes.

When you make comprehensive lifestyle changes, most people find that they feel so much better, so quickly, it reframes the reason for changing from fear of dying to joy of living. Joy and love are powerful, sustainable motivators, but fear and deprivation are not.

You have a full spectrum of nutrition and lifestyle choices. It’s not all or nothing. To the degree that you move in a healthful direction along this spectrum, you’re likely to look better, feel better, lose weight and gain health.

Can healthy eating habits combat depression? According to recent research from the University College London it’s very possible.

Many people eat diets that are high in fat, but are comprised mainly of trans fat or saturated fat from fried or fast foods. Not good, says Dr. Martinez-Gonzalez.

“The membranes of our neurons are composed of fat, so the quality of fat that you are eating definitely has an influence on the quality of the neuron membranes, and the body’s synthesis of neurotransmitters is dependent on the vitamins you’re eating,” Martinez-Gonzalez said.

It’s important to eat fats, but choosing the right type of fats is key. In simple language, fats are essential for the utilization of vitamins that assist with proper brain function. Our brains use fatty acids from fat to create the specialized cells that help us to think and feel.

We need a balance of fats so that our diets are comprised of 20% of total fats, with only 10% of total fat coming from the saturated kind like milk, coconut oil, butter or fats that are solid at room temperature. (Read more by Lori on this topic after the article below).

LONDON (AFP) – A diet heavy in processed and fatty foods increases the risk of depression, according to British research published on Monday.

Researchers at University College London also found that a diet including plenty of fresh vegetables, fruit and fish could help prevent the onset of depression.

They compared participants — all civil servants — who ate a diet largely based on “whole” foods with a second group who mainly ate fried food, processed meat, high-fat dairy products and sweetened desserts.

Taking into account other indicators of a healthy lifestyle such as not smoking and taking physical exercise, those who ate the whole foods had a 26 percent lower risk of depression than those who ate mainly processed foods.

People with a diet heavy in processed food had a 58 percent higher risk of depression.

The researchers put forward several explanations for the findings, which are published in the British Journal of Psychiatry.

Firstly, the high level of antioxidants in fruits and vegetables could have a protective effect, as previous studies have shown higher antioxidant levels to be associated with a lower risk of depression.

Secondly, eating lots of fish may protect against depression because it contains high levels of the sort of polyunsaturated fatty acids which stimulate brain activity.

And they said it was possible that a “whole food” diet protects against depression because of the combined effect of consuming nutrients from lots of different types of food, rather than the effect of one single nutrient.

The researchers concluded: “Our research suggests that healthy eating policies will generate additional benefits to health and well-being, and that improving people’s diet should be considered as a potential target for preventing depressive disorders.”

The study was carried out on 3,486 people with an average age of 55, who worked for the civil service in London.

Each participant completed a questionnaire about their eating habits, and a self-assessment for depression.

(Lori’s comments continued from top of article)…

 

Trans fats are the fats that have been under high heat and the molecular structure has been changed. These altered fats end up “clogging” our arteries and should be avoided.

Food is the brain’s primary link to its environment and to its healthy function at the chemical level. What you eat affects the brain chemicals that influence your mood, behavior, thought processes and emotional reactions that ultimately create the story of your life.

Fortunately, though, what you eat is within your power to control. The more you know about the food-brain connection, the more empowered you are to make dietary decisions that benefit your brain and combat depression.

Eat healthy fats and the next time someone calls you “fat head,” you can be proud!

1. Which of the following foods is not specifically linked to a reduced risk of heart disease?
a. Garlic
b. Oats
c. Corn
d. Grape juice
e. Nuts
2. The fiber in which of the following foods will lead to a reduction of blood cholesterol?
a. Whole-grain bread
b. Brown rice
c. Bran cereal
d. Carrots
e. Oats
3. What percentage of total deaths in the United States is linked to heart disease?
a. 20%
b. 30%
c. 40%
d. 50%
e. 60%

4. Which of the following conditions is not linked to metabolic syndrome, a cluster of conditions that vastly increases the risk for development of heart disease?
a. Kidney disease
b. Low high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol
c. High total cholesterol
d. Insulin resistance
e. Abdominal obesity

5. How many calories are contained in each gram of fat?
a. 2 calories
b. 3 calories
c. 6 calories
d. 9 calories
e. 12 calories

6. Which of the following oils is high in saturated fat?
a. Canola oil
b. Palm oil
c. Safflower oil
d. Corn oil
e. Soybean oil

7. How much soy should you eat each day to lower cholesterol levels?
a. 5 grams (g)
b. 10 g
c. 15 g
d. 20 g
e. 25 g

8. If you are trying to reduce your sodium intake, it is recommended that one serving of any food should not contain more than ________ milligrams (mg) of sodium?
a. 100 mg
b. 200 mg
c. 300 mg
d. 400 mg
e. 500 mg

9. Potassium is shown to reduce blood pressure in humans. Which of the following foods is not high in potassium?
a. Green, seedless grapes
b. Oranges and orange juice
c. Potatoes
d. Tomatoes
e. Bananas

10. Which of the following is a lean cut of beef?
a. 80%/20% ground beef
b. T-bone steak
c. Sirloin
d. Brisket
e. Chuck blade roast