It’s one of the biggest conundrums in public health: we have more information about how to lead a healthy lifestyle than ever, more information about how to lose weight or eat a healthy diet, and yet more and more people  are fatter than ever and eating worse than ever. So why is that?

The only choice

Well, part of it is obviously that we have more options now. Growing up in England there were two choices of salad dressing at the local supermarket: mayonnaise or nothing. Today, the average grocery store has so many options you could spend a week trying to decide what to put on your lettuce. And the same applies for pretty nearly every other food group. We’re spoiled for choice and often do a bad job of making good choices.

Making the right choice

Part of it is that even when we make good choices, such as choosing a low-fat version of a product, we undermine that by eating too much of it. I have seen people eat a whole non-fat cake just because they thought that the lack of fat meant an equal lack of calories, forgetting to notice that the manufacturer had added a ton of sugar to make it taste ok.

Dr. Teresa Quattrin, the Chair of the Pediatric Department at the University of Buffalo School of Medicine, noticed a similar thing in a recent study she did with children 2 to 5 years old. She found that seven out of ten of those children were eating too many calories, in some cases far more than the recommended 1,200 calories a day. In addition they weren’t getting as much activity as kids that age needed. Even at that age we are leading more sedentary lives than in the past.

Even healthy options can have a downside

Quattrin said that even children whose parents were giving them healthy foods were overdoing it. For instance, there were children who ate a whole carton of strawberries in one sitting and their parents thought that was fine. But, as Quattrin points out, even healthy food can have a downside if you are eating too much of it. And of course, if you are eating too much of a healthy food the chances are you might also be eating too much of other, much less healthy foods.

Shirley says her mum once decided that carrots were really good and she should eat more of them. A lot more. She ate so many that her skin started to turn orange. True story.

Not always a healthy choice

Quattrin says the most important thing when trying to lead a healthy life is to surround yourself with healthy options, and limit the number of unhealthy ones. For instance, have lots of fresh fruit and vegetables in the house and refrigerator, but very few so-called “treats” such as cookies and cakes and chips and candy. If children are surrounded by healthy food options they will grow up thinking that is the normal way to eat. Good habits are important things to develop from an early age.

Banish temptation

And let’s face it, the same thing applies to grown ups. If we have fresh fruits around us we are more likely to snack on them. If we have fresh fruit, plus cakes and candy and cookies, guess which things win out first.

That’s one of the reasons why I don’t have chocolate bars in the house. I know that, like Oscar Wilde, I can resist anything except temptation!

Some things just make sense. You don’t need a meteorologist to tell you what the weather is like if you look out the window and see that it’s raining. Your opinion may be anecdotal and unscientific but it’s good enough for me under those circumstances.

In the same way, you know that if you raise the price of a product the odds are good that sales will go down (not always though – some wineries have found that by jacking up the cost of some of their high end wines they sell out faster, there’s a snob element involved you see).

But our friends the research scientists can’t leave anything to chance so now there are two new studies out that show that if you raise the price of fast food, then people will eat less of it. Not exactly rocket science, but it does have a couple of other findings that make it more than just another example of  “no duh” research.

The two studies, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found that as the cost of pizza and soda rose, so the level of consumption fell. Like I said, no big surprise. But what was interesting about these studies is that the first one found that as consumption of pizza and soda fell, so did the individual’s weight. In other words, they weren’t simply switching to some other junky diet and packing on the same amount of pounds just by consuming other crappy foods.

The second study found that as the price rose and consumption fell, so did the individual’s weight and their risk for diabetes. Again not a huge surprise, but nonetheless a delightful finding.

The increase in cost wasn’t huge either, just about 10 percent, but it was enough to get people to cut back consumption by up to 11.5 percent.

In short, this means that raising the cost of crappy foods could help get people to change their eating habits, and that they won’t necessarily just switch from their old favorites to new fast foods. That’s encouraging news for a nation that needs to raise some cash in a hurry to pay off its debts, and for a nation struggling to cope with rising obesity levels and the health care costs and consequences of a diet too heavy in fat and sugar and salt.

Little Children Lotta Calories

The problem with so many weight loss programs is that they don’t really start until the problem has been building up for years. Bad habits that began in childhood are so much harder to break, and the weight they helped pack on so much harder to lose, if you wait until you are an adult to try.

A new study shows that for the last few decades our children have been developing some awfully bad habits indeed.

The study, by researchers at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and published in the journal Health Affairs, tracked the eating habits of 31,337 children between the ages of two to 18, from 1977 to 2006. They found that the number of kids who snacked between meals rose from 74 percent in 1977 to 98 percent in 2006.

They also found that by 2006, the average kid was snacking three times a day, consuming an extra 600 calories on top of what they got from their regular meals. That meant they were getting, on average, an extra 168 calories a day just from snacks, compared to 1977.

Now you might think that 168 calories isn’t a lot. And by itself it isn’t. But if you have 168 calories on Monday, then again Tuesday, then again every other day of the week, every other week of the month, every other month of the year, year after year. It adds up. Let’s do the math. There are 3500 calories in a pound, so if you are eating an extra 168 calories a day then in just 21 days you’ll have added an extra pound. 21 days, three weeks. Not long is it!

The end result is a person who is carrying 20, 30, 40 or more pounds than they might otherwise be hauling around with them, if they hadn’t snacked as much when they were younger.

So parents, take note. A sweet treat today is fine. But when it becomes a daily routine, several times a day, then it’s no longer a treat, it’s a threat. That extra ‘h’ makes all the difference to the future health of your child.

Now that our amazing grand daughter Emma Danger is in our lives we are discovering new routines and making changes to re-visit old routines too!  She may be only 1 year but she is an opinionated, self-regulated, young lady who absolutely knows what she wants….and it’s “That”!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB6toE9jD-w

She loves the word “That” and she has found out that it can be used for almost anything.  She will point and say, “That” and if you give her any lip, like saying, “Do you want the banana?”  She will continue to point and say “That”  until you finally, select the wanted object.  This can be pretty challenging if she is pointing to a dinner table filled with salt shakers, silverware, plates of food, etc.  Yes, Emma has her routine and she is picking up our routines too.

Kevin and I have decided to make sure she knows the “routine” when she comes to our house.  For instance, we all sit down for breakfast when Emma visits.  Normally, Kevin and I eat while we are editing this blog, or listening to the radio, or getting dressed, but when Emma is here we sit down and eat together. It represents how important she is to us.

There have been lots of studies on the importance of sharing meals together. In fact, studies have found that having a regular dining experience with your family is so important that children who have infrequent dinners, (say less than 3 times a week), are  twice as likely to use tobacco or marijuana; and more than one and a half times likelier to use alcohol.   Sharing time at the dinner table, without cell phones,or text messages, game boys, or the TV honors the children by giving them undivided attention.  It makes them feel valued.

Think of it, just having a simple dinner  creates a safe place, a regular  schedule and a time for sharing food and conversation.  When my girls were little,  dinner was very important.  They would sit at the counter and do some homework while their Dad and I cooked.  It was a time where they could ask questions about the homework or just spend the time to work and chat.  We found out about what they were doing at school, who was new, what the teachers did, and what was going on with the other kids at school.  Then we sat down to eat,comfortable with each other, catching up without forcing it.

So turn off the cell phone and listen up, you might learn something and they will feel important.

Sometimes something seems so obvious you don’t even need to point it out. But not apparently if you are a medical researcher. It seems that nothing is so patently clear that they can’t find some pretext to get research dollars to tell us what we already know.

For instance, a new study in the journal Spine says that heavy backpacks put a lot of extra weight on a child’s spine, and the heavier the backpack the more weight and the greater the potential for pain. No kidding! And they needed a study to tell us that?

They could just have gone to any school and seen the kids coming out, doubled over like a fourth grade Quasimodo as they struggle to make it home or to their parent’s car with the equivalent of a small cow on their back. Now, maybe that’s not as thoroughly scientific as doing a randomised control study with complex statistical analysis but you know what, it’s just as true. Or they could just have asked the kids. That would work too.

Here’s my current favorite study. Those lovely people at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that antibiotics that can cause hearing loss in people can actually, when given in extended low doses, protect the hearing of young mice.  You read that correctly, young mice.

Why is this important? Is there a big problem among the adolescent mouse population regarding hearing loss that we need to get to the bottom of (too many mice wearing their iPods too long at high volume no doubt). Are juvenile rodents walking around with ear trumpets so they can hear the delighted squeals of their brothers and sisters who have found a lump of cheese. Who even came up with the premise for this study and thought “hmm, I wonder if this antibiotic which causes hearing loss in people could help protect some other mammalian species?”

Or was it just the pharmaceutical company that makes the antibiotic looking for another market because clearly the human market for a drug that makes you deaf is going to be rather small. But think of the consequences. Now all this mice will be able to hear us setting mouse traps or putting down poison so they know to avoid them. Pretty soon our homes and our cities will be overun with mice spreading plagues and disease and all manner of unpleasant things.

The young mice of the world thank you Professor William W. Clark, PhD. The rest of us, well, we’re not so keen on it.

So our great friend, and English correspondent, Vicki told me the other day that many of our blog postings are clearly not written with parents in mind because many of the things we talk about or encourage people to do are things that parents just don’t have time for.

And after taking care of baby Emma Danger I can really understand what she is talking about. We took care of Emma recently – while her parents were in Europe catching up on culture and sleep – for 9 days and 28 nights, at least that’s how it felt!!

Actually, Emma is a gem of a baby; she’s pretty good at sleeping through the night. Once you get her to that point. Up till then it’s a team operation feeding, cleaning, clothing, calming her. Which helped me understand exactly what Vicki was talking about.

You see, unless you have kids you don’t really get just how much work is involved in taking care of them. I never had kids myself, I skipped that stage and just went straight to being a grand dad – which I love. But what’s fascinating to me is just how all consuming having one kid is. It takes two of us to get Emma up and fed and ready in the morning. It’s incredible.

My mum had five kids under the age of ten, at one point four of us were under the age of five. I have absolutely no idea how she did it. To be  honest, neither does she, she simply says “ah well, you just get on with it.”

And she is right, you don’t have a choice, or time or anything. So, when Vicki says this blog doesn’t always take into account parents she is right on one level, we make assumptions about people having the time or making the time to exercise or go to the gym.

But to be honest if you have a young family you probably don’t need to go to the gym, because there are more than enough opportunities to use the kids as exercise equipment!

• Chasing them around is aerobic.
• Carrying them around is weight training – particularly as they get a little older and try to resist just being carried around all the time, that is weight and resistance training.
• Playing with them is both aerobic and weight training – kids love to be lifted up and tossed up in the air. Do that a few times and you’ll know you are getting a workout. But the best bit is listening to them laughing like crazy when you do it – that’s the best incentive to work out that you will ever get.
• Lie on your back and use your baby as a bench press. Lift them up and down. Up and down. It’s great fun for baby and bloody hard work for you.
• Hold baby in your arms and do squats. The kid won’t have a clue what you are doing but your thighs will. Oh boy will they!

See, the only limitation to your workouts is your imagination. And when you are around a kid you quickly realize, it’s time to let your imagination run wild.

Sometimes it feels as if you can’t turn around without bumping into another study that tells you how wonderful exercise is. Most of it is stuff you probably already know – at least it is if you read Health and Simple regularly – but once in a while you come across some fun new benefit that makes you think “cool”.

We’ll get to that in a minute.

But first.. Just Being Fat Increases a Kids Risk of Heart Disease
Now, we all know that more and more children are becoming overweight or even obese. Not just here in the U.S. but throughout Europe and other developed and affluent nations. Now a new study says the consequences of that may be far graver than we thought.

The study, in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, found that as early as age 7, being obese may raise a child’s risk of future heart disease and stroke, even if they don’t have any other risk factors for cardiovascular problems such as high blood pressure.

That’s a wake-up call to parents, schools and pediatricians that they need to be more aggressive in working with kids with weight problems, to tackle them early and often so that those kids don’t grow up overweight or obese. The longer the problems persist, the greater the risk of future health problems.

Now, the news that fat kids start showing signs of heart disease early on is not new. But this adds an extra wrinkle. This shows that even if the kids are otherwise healthy and show no other indications of heart problems, just being fat shows they are heading for a world of health problems, unless we act quickly.

Move More Live Longer, and Healthier
OK, stop me if you heard this before. Exercise or physical activity is linked to a friggin’ host of wonderful things such as reduced risk of:

• arthritis
• falls
• fractures
• heart disease
• lung disease
• cancer
• diabetes
• obesity
• watching the Kardashians (OK, the evidence isn’t all in on this one but hopefully if you workout regularly you won’t have time to watch this dreadful, awful, scripted “reality” show) (note from Shirl:  I kinda like it…love the make-up!)

But now a bunch of new studies in the Archives of Internal Medicine show that exercise can have benefits in all sorts of fun, new ways

• Among women who are 70 or older, those who exercise regularly during middle age are healthier in many areas of health from less risk of chronic disease to lower risk of heart problems or dementia
• Exercise programs are associated with denser bones in older women. Why is that good? Because stronger bones mean less likely of fracture or other serious problems if you fall – either fall in love or fall in the shower
• Here’s my favorite. Resistance training can improve some cognitive skills in older women. This is such a cool study. The researchers found that doing resistance training just once or twice a week can not only improve attention and concentration skills among older women, but it can also improve conflict resolution skills. Amazing eh. Better conflict resolution skills. But then I figured that no one wants to argue with an old woman who’s built like Arnold Schwarzenneger so maybe that explains it. But what a cool granny eh!

You have to love a news release with an opening line that says: “It seems like a no-brainer, and it is.” Now that’s honesty for you. It’s also very clever and good writing because it instantly gets your attention.

The no-brainer in question is a new study that says if you take the junk food out of school vending machines then kids will eat less junk food. Sounds like a study from the “No Duh!” school of science doesn’t it? But this study is actually a bit more clever and complex than it at first appears.

The study was done by researchers at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale. So, you figure if they’re at Yale they have to be pretty smart.

When they began the experiment the researchers were a tad worried that taking the junk food out of school vending machines would lead to a so-called “forbidden fruit phenomenon” where kids make up for the lack of crap at school by eating a lot more junk at home. Happily that didn’t turn out to be the case.

The researchers found that overall junk food consumption went down, in effect students ate better at home but didn’t eat any worse at home.

That’s the good news. The better news of course would be if they also ate healthier food at home but that’s a whole other issue.

For now, I suppose, it is encouraging to see that schools can help kids lead healthier lifestyles with relatively small changes. And these were relatively small changes, because even though the researchers removed stuff like doughnuts and cookies and potato chips and sugar-laden sodas, they replaced them with fruit juice, baked chips and pretzels – still not exactly a health food diet but not as bad as before.

However, we need to do better. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends not giving fruit juice to children – even if it is 100 percent juice – because of its high sugar content. At a time when more and more kids are overweight or even obese, every little bit we can do to help them eat and drink in a more healthy way is important.

So why not remove all the junk food and replace it with water and fruit? Because vending machines are a big source of income for many schools. Budget cuts are hitting many schools hard and so the money they make from selling junk is helping fill part of that gap. But it comes with a not-so-hidden cost, children’s health.

These are not trivial things. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says this generation of children will be the first in a long time to live shorter lives than their parents. That’s because what these children eat today is laying the groundwork for a whole host of future health issues from diabetes to heart disease and cancer.

So, I’m thinking the real no-brainer here is why we don’t do more to help our children.

No Duh!

So, I was watching TV comedian and political commentator Bill Maher recently and Bill was interviewing Alan Grayson, the Democratic Congressman from the 8th District of Florida.  They were talking about health care. These days there are a lot of politicians, and even ordinary people, on TV shows talking about health care reform. Just the other day the Today Show had families talking about the problems they have had in getting insurance for their children.

Recently, it was reported  51% of the American public want to have a Public Option for insurance, but if you think about it…that doesn’t matter, because those people are not being heard, because the people we have elected to look out for us are looking out for themselves or their own party.  They are not looking out for the common good, they are looking to be re-elected, they are looking to make their party stronger.  They are not looking out for you or me.   Oh…that’s okay because you have health care you say?  Okay, think about this.

The real issue is how much responsibility the government has for its citizens’ health care?   What is the   role of government and the responsibility of citizens for their own welfare.   Do you want the government to help you…so you don’t become bankrupted by a health problem like half of all the bankruptcies each year. Yes, half of all bankruptcies are caused by health care costs.

So let’s take a look at this.  You have a family…but actually you don’t even need to have a family to go bankrupt, really all you need is to be uninsured and have an accident.  Oh, you say but you are insured?  Well, my dear, I have insurance too.  I had a mother who had insurance.  She had cancer.  She had 2 big binders of bills and insurance forms, each was 2 inches thick.  My sister, God Bless her, organized, followed and argued for each charge that we thought was unwarranted. My mother had support and help and someone who understood bureaucracy.  My sister was like a puppy with a shoe. Nothing went unquestioned, because my mother did not have the strength to fight.  She had my sister.

What if you took a flying header off you bike…If you are uninsured, you are facing a lot of bills, and if you are insured, you are facing a lot of record keeping, calling, showing your proof and continual arguments.

I heard a gal on the radio show, “Fresh Air”, the other day telling host Teri Gross that most people think that when you get cancer you should take care of yourself and be “serene and at peace” so your body can heal itself, but instead, she was on the phone, begging, arguing and persisting…fighting for the right to her health care, and the chance to live.

What is wrong here.  You may not need it now, you may be safe, but people deserve the right to have help, support, and good health care.  Medical care when you need it.  It should be a right, not a privilege.

Don’t you think so – If you do, please let your representative know how you feel.

…that’s all I have to say today.

Schools are supposed to be institutions that feed children’s minds, filling them up with thoughts and reasoning. Instead too many schools seem to be places where children fill up their up bodies with junk and candy and “crap” from vending machines. And that investment in vending machines is undermining the investment in kids brains.

We need to ban vending machines from schools. I know they make money for schools, helping them pay for supplies and even some classes, but they undermine the school’s basic mission, namely to educate the next generation.

Think about it. Vending machines are a form of attractively packed, well-designed drug delivery system. They’re helping kids pump crap into their bodies, junk that undermines children’s  ability to get the stuff they really need, knowledge, into their brain.

Candy, sodas, chips, all the stuff you find in vending machines have an impact on the brain, impairing its ability to think clearly. A study by researchers at the University Laboratory of Physiology in Oxford, England found that transfats, a common ingredient in a lot of junk food, push out the essential fats that children’s brains need, and interfere with the way the brain sends and receives signals. In short, it clogs up the machinery of the mind.

All that fat and sugar and salt is having a direct impact on children’s performance in the classroom. A study by the New School Food Trust in the UK, found that children who eat a healthy diet do better in school, are more focused in the classroom and better able to learn, and they achieve better exam results compared to children who eat a poor diet, one heavy in sodas, chocolate and chips.

If a school’s primary purpose is to improve the minds of its charges then what possible justification can there be for having machines around that directly undermine that goal. It seems ridiculous to have something in the school corridor that makes it hard for the teacher to do their job properly in the classroom.

It doesn’t have to be that way. California has already banned soda vending machines in elementary and junior high schools and two schools in Orange County, California (Heritage Oak Private School and Whittier Christian High School) have replaced their junky vending machines with ones containing healthier snacks, without seeing a drop in income.

It can be done. You just have to put your mind to it. Of course, if that mind is addled by fat and salt and sugar courtesy of a vending machine, it may not be able to think fast enough or clearly enough to do what it should have done a long time ago.

Schools need money, but not at the expense of undermining their basic mission. If it comes to a choice between school supplies and children’s brain, it’s an easy one to make.

Next time you are at the park or the beach or just walking around your local shopping mall take a look around you at the kids. What do you see? I’m guessing that you’ll see a huge number of kids who are either overweight or downright obese. In some places it may be much harder to find a kid who is normal weight than it is to find a chunky child.

All that struck me as Shirley and I were in Hawaii on our recent vacation, not because the kids we saw were fat, but because so many of the ones we saw weren’t. It got me to wondering why, and if the answer to that couldn’t help kids nationwide.

One evening we were at a bar-b-q at the beach with some local families and it was fascinating to see their kids, mostly boys, just running around for hours, playing, fishing, swimming, and generally just goofing about.

It reminded me that that was how most people used to grow up. That for generations children were able to run around and play in their own neighborhoods. In some cases, in some places, kids can still do that but for most children today, living in the city or the suburbs, that’s just not possible. There’s too much traffic on the streets, too few parks or other safe places to play.

That lack of freedom to just run around is one of the reasons why so many children today are struggling with their weight (though obviously diet plays a big role too). It may also be one of the reasons why we have seen an increase in the number of kids diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder) in recent years.

Think about it. If children don’t have the opportunity to run around and burn off all their excess energy it gets channeled into other things, other ways. One of those may well be acting out, one of the critical factors in getting a child diagnosed as ADHD.

On Kauai the kids have plenty of room and even more opportunity to run around. They can play soccer, swim, surf, run, run, and run some more. In essence they were able to just be kids.

Clearly it’s not possible to replicate those conditions in cities and suburbs throughout the country but maybe there is something we can do to help increase the opportunities for children to get exercise, and along the way to help boost community spirits in economically depressing times.

In cities around the U.S. tens of thousands of homes are in foreclosure, in many cases they are derelict and ready to be pulled down. Instead of leaving those soon-to-be-empty plots to grow grass and get decrepit, why not turn them into play areas for children? After the houses are torn down and the lot is empty, the area could be turned into places where children can play and run and burn off steam and calories at the same time.

Clearly there isn’t much money around to do this but it wouldn’t take that much, and perhaps instead of relying on the city or county or state to provide the funding, the local community could do it themselves. People in the neighborhood could work together to provide the labor to dig up these abandoned pieces of land, to turn them into places that were big enough to allow kids to play.

They wouldn’t need to be fancy. They wouldn’t need to have equipment. They wouldn’t need to be pretty. They just need to be safe.

Right now there are a lot of people out of work, people who are struggling to find purpose in their daily activities. Helping out with a project like this could give them a sense of value, a sense they are contributing something to the community, while they look for work.

It could do something equally valuable too. It could give kids their childhood back.