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Fresh Fruit Favorite Snack for Kids
A study by a leading
marketing company, which should delight parents, says fresh fruit is the
favorite snack of U.S. children. The study by NPD Group, based in Port
Washington, N.Y., placed yogurt in second place among children ages 2 to
7, USA Today reported. Potato chips came in second among boys 7 to 12.
Among girls in that group, chewing gum was second. Chocolate candy
ranked in the top five for all children 2 to 12.
The findings come at a time when there's growing concern that children are
eating too much junk food, the newspaper said. Some nutritionists were surprised
by the findings. "I'm in total disbelief," said one dietitian. "When I talk to
kids about what they are snacking on, often it is chips. It's a rare child that
is eating fruit." The NPD Group study asked 750 people to do online surveys
about the snacks they ate the day before. Parents record what children under 7
ate. NPD also found the favorite snacks among adults, ages 18 to 54, are gum,
chocolate, fresh fruit, breath or candy mints and ice cream.
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2-Minute Exercise May Do the Trick
For those struggling to
fit exercise in their schedule, only 2 minutes of intense exercise could
do the trick. "The whole excuse that 'I don't have enough time to
exercise' is directly challenged by these findings," said study author
Martin Gibala, of McMaster
University, Hamilton, Ontario. "This has
potential to change the way we think about keeping fit."
The study, published the Journal of Applied
Physiology, found the 2-minute workout produced the same muscle enzymes --
essential for preventing type 2 diabetes -- as cycling for 10 times as long,
reported the Daily Mail. The researchers tracked 23 men and women aged 25 to 35
of moderate fitness in workouts of intense to moderate activity.
The 2-minute workout - cycling
furiously on a stationary bike in four 30-second bursts with four minutes rest
in between - three times a week displayed the same health and fitness benefits
as others who cycled at a moderate pace for a total of six hours, according to
Gibala. People should consult their doctor before changing their exercise
routine.
Ads Confuse Kids on
Healthy Foods
A University of
Illinois study finds TV commercials about food are confusing children about
what is healthy and what is not. The study found the more television a child
watches, the more confused they are about what foods will make them strong and
healthy. Speech Professor Kristen Harrison, the author of the study, said the
commercials also robbed children of their ability to provide the reasons behind
their food choices.
Children equate labels like "diet" with "fat-free" with nutritious. "When they
were presented with choices like Diet Coke vs. orange juice and fat-free ice
cream vs. cottage cheese, they were more likely to pick the wrong answer - the
diet and fat-free foods - than when they were presented with choices without
these labels, for example, spinach vs. lettuce," Harrison said.
"The labels diet and fat-free suggest that these foods are good
for them and make it harder for them to pick the 'right' answer," Harrison said, noting the goal of the study was "to gauge
children's understanding of which food would help them grow, not make them
slimmer."
Copyright 2005 – UPI
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Soy Can Lower Cholesterol
University of
Kentucky physician James Anderson has found that soy beans can help lower
cholesterol and blood sugar. Writing in the June issue of the Journal of
the American
College of Nutrition, Anderson, also a noted nutritionist, says most people in
the United States only have
vague idea that soy is a healthy food.
Anderson tested two commercially available meal replacements, one soy-based, and
the other milk-based among obese adults for 12 weeks. Both groups lost weight
but the soy-based group lost slightly more weight in any given week, and
displayed lower serum cholesterol and LDL cholesterol levels. Soy intake also
produced small but significant reductions in serum glucose values.
"The bottom line is soy is healthy, and while incorporating it into weight loss
may not have a more dramatic effect on your waistline than other nutrition
plans, its benefits go beyond weight loss toward increasing overall health,"
Anderson said. In an accompanying article, Anderson raised the possibility that
poor snack choices may play an active role in increasing rates of childhood
obesity. He said snacking can be healthful when the foods are high in
nutritional value and low in calories.
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Content
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School Start Times Deprive Sleep
NW University researchers
say current high school start times deprive teens of sleep and affect their
academic performance.
Researchers say these start times force the students to perform academically
early in the morning, or a time of day when they are at their worst.
The study's findings, published in the June issue of the journal Pediatrics,
also showed that adolescents lost as much as two hours of sleep per night during
the school week, but weekend sleep times during the school year were similar to
those in summer.
The study was a collaborative project among researchers at the Feinberg School
of Medicine and the Center for Sleep and Circadian Biology at Northwestern
University and faculty, students and parents from
Evanston
Township High School in
Evanston, Ill.
The students were advanced placement biology students who helped conduct the
study and analyze the collected data.
Copyright 2005 – UPI
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Fat, Cigarettes Make Women Age Faster
Obesity and cigarettes accelerate the aging process, an
average nine years for obese women and seven years for heavy smokers, London
researchers say. Research, led by Tim Spector of St. Thomas
Hospital and reported in the British journal Lancet, examined 1,122 women in
concluding fat and cigarettes accelerate the demise of telomeres, the caps on
chromosomes, in white blood cells. "We've known obesity increases your risk of
many diseases, and of dying early. What's novel here is that it seems that fat
itself actually accelerates the aging process," Spector told the Washington
Post. The typical woman's telomeres shorten by 27 DNA base pairs a year, said
Spector of the joint research with New
Jersey's University of Medicine and Dentistry.
Heavy smokers -- those who puffed a pack a day for 40 years -- wore off 200
additional base pairs. Women who are obese, or those with a body-mass index
greater than 30, wore off even more -- 240 base pairs. Spector told Nature the
findings may give people another reason to lose weight or quit smoking.
Copyright 2005 -
Article City
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Parents Top Role Models
Parents top the list of role models identified by teen
s in a recent Junior
Achievement/Harris Interactive Poll.
Thirty-two percent identified parents as the best role
models for teens, according to the demographically weighted survey of 624 teens
between the ages of 13 and 18.
Next came teachers at 15 percent, basketball star Kobe Bryant at 5 percent and
talk show host Oprah Winfrey at 3 percent, who tied with President George W.
Bush.
Divided by gender, 36 percent of males identified parents as their top choice,
while they were selected by 28 percent of females.
Copyright 2005 eContent Matters
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Lawn Mower Safety Tips
The 75,000 Americans who are injured each year by lawn mowers could have
prevented the accidents by following simple safety rules.
For example, University of
Michigan
researchers say, riding lawn mowers cause some of the most serious injuries for
both adults and children because adults often allow young children to ride on
their lap while they cut the lawn.
Riding mowers also have the potential to tip over when going up slopes.
Physicians recommend children under age 16 should not operate a lawn mower.
Adults operating mowers should wear protective gear, including pants, steel-toed
boots, goggles and ear protection.
All debris should be removed from the yard before mowing to make sure it is not
picked up by the mower and sent out as a projectile.
Copyright 2005 – UPI
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And the Winner is - Chiropractic
You suffer from low back pain
(LBP) and you'd like to seek a doctor's care, but you're not sure where
to go. Consider this: A recent study compared the effectiveness of
chiropractic care vs. medical management for LBP and found that
chiropractic care had a higher success rate in treating LBP than did
traditional medical care.
Researchers examined 2,870 adult patients with acute or
chronic LBP from the practices of 51 chiropractic clinics and 14 general
practice community clinics. At baseline and at various intervals over
the next 4 years, patients rated intensity of current pain levels on a
pain scale of 0-100 and completed questionnaires designed to measure
effects of their pain on functional disability.
Results: The greatest degree of improvement was seen
within three months of the initial treatment of back pain, with a
"modest advantage" seen for chiropractic care over medical care of
chronic pain patients in the first 12 months. At the one- and
three-month intervals, "clinical importance" was achieved with
chiropractic care administered to chronic LBP patients. Comparing
chiropractic vs. medical care, the average difference in pain scores was
12.2 points at one month and 10.5 points at three months, favoring
chiropractic care.
Still undecided? Chiropractic isn't just for back pain
anymore. Regular chiropractic care has been shown to, among other
things, relieve chronic headache and arthritis pain as well as relieve
stress and promote general health. For more information on this and
other studies highlighting the benefits of chiropractic, visit
chiropracticresearchreview.com.
Noise Affects Baby's Language
Development
A Purdue
University study says even moderate background noise can affect how infants learn
language at an early and crucial time of their development. "This
research reaffirms how important it is for a child to see the face of a
person while hearing him or her speak," says George Hollich, the study's
author.
"This is the first study to show how children are easily distracted when
the background noise is at the same loudness as the person talking to
the child. We found even soft noise can be a problem." For the study,
Hollich teamed with experts at the Univ. of
Maryland, and Johns
Hopkins
University. Their paper is published in the June issue of the Journal
Child Development.
"Unlike the printed word, speech doesn't use commas, spaces or periods
to separate words and concepts. If there is more than one source of
speech, it's especially hard for the infant to know when one word ends
and another begins. That is why infants need to match what they hear
with the movements of the speaker's face," Hollich said.
Copyright 2005 eContent Matters
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Too Much Milk Leads to Overweight in
Children
Children who drink more than three glasses of milk a day
are 35% more likely to be overweight than those who drink less milk,
Boston researchers say. "Children should not be drinking milk as a means
of losing weight or trying to control weight," Harvard
Medical School researcher
Catherine Berkey told the Washington Post. Berkey said she had expected
drinking milk would benefit children in light of millions the U.S.
National Dairy Council has spent on advertising.
"The dairy industry tells children and adults, 'Drink more milk and you
will lose weight.' I think that is misleading," Berkey said of the
research published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
The
study, which used data
from 12,829 children participating in the ongoing Growing Up Today
study, found those who drank three or more glasses of milk daily were
more 35% more likely to be overweight than those who drank two or fewer
glasses. A dairy industry spokesman said its diet-loss message has been
pitched to adults combined with cutting calories.
Copyright 2005 – UPI
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Kids Will Gorge on Large Servings
Pre-school children will eat as large a serving as they
are given, regardless of how much they last ate, researchers at Cornell
University have found. "We found that portion size is, by far, the most important
factor in predicting how much a child will eat," said David Levitsky,
professor of nutritional sciences and of psychology at Cornell.
"These findings suggest that both the onus of controlling children's
weight -- both in causing overweight in children as well as in its
prevention -- must rest squarely in the hands of parents and other
caregivers." Levitsky and Dr. Gordana Mrdjenovic monitored the food
intake of 16 preschool children, ages 4-6, for five to seven consecutive
days in day-care centers, and parents kept a food diary of what their
children ate in the evenings and weekends.
"We found that the more
food children are served, the more they eat, regardless of what they've
eaten previously in the day, including how big their breakfast was,"
said Levitsky. The study is published in the June issue of Appetite.
Copyright 2005 eContent Matters
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Fathers Also Have Post-Partum
Depression
Bristol and Oxford
University researchers in England found
postpartum depression affects a significant number of fathers. The
researchers, working with colleagues from the University of
Rochester in New York, analyzed records
on 8,430 fathers. Eight weeks following birth, 3.6 percent, or 303
fathers, appeared to be suffering from depression, with symptoms
including anxiety, mood swings, irritability and feelings of
hopelessness.
The study, published in the Lancet, also found baby boys whose fathers
were depressed had twice as many behavioral and emotional problems in
their pre-school years, the BBC reported.
"We already know that postnatal depression in mothers can affect the
quality of maternal care, and is associated with disturbances in
children's later social, behavioral, psychological and physical
development," said Oxford psychiatrist Dr. Paul Ramchandani. "While a
significant number of men do report depression following the birth of a
child," he said, "until now the influence of depression in fathers
during the early years of a child's life has received scant attention."
Copyright 2005 - ARA Content
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Belly Talk - A
US
Phenomenon
U.S. researchers said
"belly talk" -- the practice of talking to an unborn child -- is a
uniquely American pregnancy practice. Anthropologists at the University
of Michigan said many parents-to-be talk to their unborn child, read
stories out loud and play classical music to bond and give the baby a
head start on life.
"It's one of the ways expectant parents here start to think of their
unborn children as persons who are part of their family," said
researcher Sallie Han. Communicating with the unborn is common among
Americans but rare in other cultures, she added.
Unlike baby talk, forms of which are found in most cultures -- often as
simple, high-pitched tones reserved for young children -- belly talk
usually sounds like regular speech, Han said. Sometimes it is
spontaneous, but often it is initiated in response to fetal kicks or
other movements.
Belly talk includes more than just speech, according to Han. It also
includes reading and playing music to the unborn child, rubbing, poking
or prodding the pregnant belly, and interpreting fetal kicks and other
movements as communications from the expected baby.
Copyright 2005 – UPI
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Keeping Fingernails Healthy
It's not necessary to get a fancy manicure to keep fingernails healthy,
according to
Minnesota researchers. Nails need moisture just like skin does, so the
Mayo Clinic Health Letter suggests using lotion on nails when
moisturizing hands.
Picking at or biting the skin near nails can damage the nail bed,
allowing bacteria or fungi to enter and cause infection. Never pull off
hangnails -- doing so almost always results in ripping into living
tissue. Clip hangnails off, leaving a slight angle outward.
Copyright 2005
- ARA Content
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