Healthy and Simple

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 [...]

You may have heard a fanfare of trumpets the other day when it was announced that obesity levels in the US have flattened. Not fattened. Flattened. That doesn’t mean obesity levels are going down, only that they are no longer going up. Two thirds of American adults and one third of American kids are still [...]

The title to this piece is the opening line to a song by Simon and Garfunkel. Strangely the song is called the 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy) – and that alone dates it – even though there is no obvious reference to either 59th Street or a bridge.  The line sprang to mind when [...]

Here’s some cheery news. Not surprising, but not much fun either. Being overweight puts you at greatly increased risk of cancer. And of course death.
This latest piece of good cheer about weight comes from a study released at ECCO 15 – ESMO 34 (sounds like a football score doesn’t it!), the largest cancer congress meeting [...]

Sugar is probably one of the most popular ingredients in cooking. It makes everything, well almost everything, taste better. No wonder it’s in virtually everything we eat, even in foods we wouldn’t ordinarily think contained any – such as a Big Mac, ketchup, even peanut butter.
The average American eats 156 lbs of sugar every year, [...]

I used to think that being healthy, losing weight, sticking with an exercise program was just a matter of will power. If you were fat or slovenly or had bad habits it was just because you lacked the fortitude to change your lifestyle and take care of yourself.
Then I grew up and discovered that the [...]

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 [...]

So, the other day I was sitting around at lunch with some of my colleagues chatting about the resurgence of the Taliban in Pakistan, the Obama bailout plan, and the nutritional qualities of Funyun Rings,  and I noticed that not one of my workmates was drinking water. They were drinking sodas and ice teas and [...]

Some friends of ours recently visited San Francisco from England. We had many conversations during their stay and asked them to write an article about some of their perceptions about America. Vicki Wiles is a nurse and genetic counselor, these are her thoughts.
“We love visiting America. We love the sunshine after England’s grey skies, the [...]

A couple of weeks ago we ran a Special Report about a new approach to tackling the problem of obesity, one that targeted the fast food industry and used the same kind of public health strategies that are proving effective against tobacco and smoking, namely restricting where they can be consumed and by whom.

Now [...]