What are you (we) feeding your (our) kids?

It's not just what we're feeding them in their own kitchens, of course. The modern world has conspired to undermine even the most health-oriented parents' best efforts to teach their children well when it comes to what kind of nutrition they need for their little bodies, hearts and souls.

While food isn't supposed to be medicine -- it is, after all, one of life's most wondrous pleasures and a source of pure joy -- it sure as heck shouldn't be poison, either.

With something approaching half of all American children now being overweight or obese, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently studied three influential contributors to kids' "food environment": child care, school and the larger community. In other words, leaving aside what parents and families do to help their kids learn a healthy relationship with food, what are these other players contributing?

Well, as reported in Time Magazine, there's a lot of bad going on out there.

Child-care facilities and schools at all levels in most states don't bother to restict access to sugary soft drinks and other junk food. School lunches are disastrously unhealthy in many school districts (see Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, now running on ABC-TV, for on-the-ground evidence of the crap that passes for a nutritious meal). And children's television is overrun with enticements for the consumption of all kinds of sugar-, fat- and salt-laden foods.

What can we do about any of this? Here's some advice for parents:

For starters, take the TV out of kids' bedrooms. And then start eating dinner as a family. "Eating meals together as a family is associated with positive effects on children across many domains of life, including the development of healthy eating behaviors and the maintenance of a healthy weight status," the report says. Indeed, the American Association of Pediatrics says family meals are linked with a host of benefits to health and well-being, including better grades and less drug use.
Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/04/28/the-sad-state-of-american-kids-food-environments/#ixzz1L88PtjZz

"The Myth about Exercise" and weight -- new info

Time Magazine had a very interesting cover story last week (dated 8/17/09) about new research questioning whether exercise actually helps with weight loss or even weight control. We've all thought that burning calories at the gym or playing sports as well as doing strength training will help us drop pounds--or at least not gain weight as we age.

The Time article blows some holes in those notions. Researchers are finding that when we do blast some calories through exercise, we end up hungrier than if we hadn't exercised, and can easily eat as much (or more) after our exertion than we would have otherwise. Moreover, other researchers have documented that people who exercise vigorously will go home and slug out, versus those who divide their activity levels more evenly across the day and evening.

My summary doesn't do justice to the article, so I encourage you to seek it out, if interested. The author does stress that exercise is still important for many other benefits besides weight control--one of the main reasons I am an exercise fanatic is that it helps me sleep better, for instance. But it is rather eye-opening and sobering to think that exercise and weight may not be all that closely tied.