Infographic: Daily Nutritional Needs for Adults and Children

This chart summarizes what our daily eating plan should look like, according to the Federal Government. It's not perfect -- too much emphasis on animal products, thanks to lobbying by the meat and dairy industries. But these guidelines are a step in the right direction, encouraging fruit and veggie consumption.
The graphic came from an article about countries around the world that are suffering from "nutritional crisis." Most of them are in Africa and Asia, but #11 on the list of eleven is the good old U.S. of A., where two-thirds of us are overweight or obese.
Click here to read the article.

What the future holds for our children: America's Obesity Epidemic

Created by: Medical Coding Career Guide

Overweight: the new normal

Alas, we are super-sizing everything, from theater seats to serving/portion sizes in food, to "vanity sizing" of clothes. Here's a chart -- not well reproduced here, sorry to say -- that shows the increase in the percentage of American kids and adults who are obese.

Obesity rates have gone up for almost all age groups 1999-2008





Garbing the girth
Clothing outlets have expanded plus-sized inventories. Bulky clothes are available for children as young as 3, and Target and Forever 21 offer plus-sized fashions for teens. Quadruple-extra-large shirts are on the rack for men with 60-inch waists.

"Vanity sizing," in which manufacturers adjust apparel size downward so it's more palatable for women, is spreading. A size 4 today was, 20 years ago, a size 8. Some 62 percent of American women wear a size 14 or larger.

But full-size fashion has its price: Plus-sized clothing, which uses more material, costs 10 to 15 percent more than regular apparel.

High-volume cargo

Federal officials have increased the average passenger weight for buses and commercial boats, from 150 pounds to 175 pounds for bus passengers and from 160 pounds to 185 pounds for boat passengers. Buses must be stronger and bigger to handle folks of amplitude, and boats must trim their passenger lists.

Government regulations for car seat belts, set in the 1960s, require them to fit a 215-pound man with a hip circumference of 47 inches. In 2003, however, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated that more than 38 million people, or 19 percent of Americans, were too large for their seat belts. To accommodate heftier drivers, some car manufacturers include seat belts that are 18 to 20 inches longer, or offer seat belt extenders.

SOURCE: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

To resolve, or not to resolve?

How often do you make new year's resolutions? Every year, sometimes, never?

I'm pretty much in the "never" response category, but not because I can't find anything to improve about myself. Au contraire! Resolving to do better about something is almost literally a daily occurrence, with dropping a couple of pounds being rather high on the list.

In the spirit of renewal--not only a new year, but also a new decade--what would our resolutions for 2010 be? I mean on top of any personal goals of self-improvement, such as really getting to a healthy and comfortable weight. What contributions can we make to the world around us?

My first thought is to help find ways to do something positive about our nation's obesity epidemic. While Americans' health has improved since 2000 on some measures, such as lower death rates for cancer and heart disease, on other measures we have fallen back. As the costs for our health care continue to rise, far outpacing inflation, we have gotten heavier, we still smoke too much, and diseases such as diabetes have taken on epidemic proportions here.

Here's an interesting article from the federal agency, Occupational Health and Safety Administration, called "The decade [2000-2009] in health and safety."

As healthy foodies, we should be in the forefront of demanding that our food industry clean up its act and stop contributing to our nation's declining health profile. (See the movie "Food, Inc." on DVD if you want to learn more about our country's industrial food system.) As individuals, we can demand that the restaurants and grocery stores we patronize make healthier food choices easier for individuals to make. Also see the Food, Inc." movie's website for its list of "10 simple things you can do to change our food system."

Congress and our state legislatures need to get into the fray and (for instance) give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) much broader enforcement powers. The U.S. House has passed the Food Safety Enhancement Act; we should encourage the Senate to move forward and enact this legislation.

These are just a few ideas for the New Year.

If you have others, please share them!