The following story appeared yesterday in both the Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer. The basic reporting was done by The New York Times; I provided the local comments. Yesterday, I ran more of those local comments in this space. The story below appears in expanded form, with links. When Linda Helms first tried Weight Watchers four years ago, she lost weight using the venerable weight-loss program’s popular points…

In today’s Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer is a story on Weight Watchers’ shift within the past year to the Points Plus system, which WW said was intended to steer people toward more healthy food choices. One change under the new plan: encourage people to eat more fresh fruits by giving them zero points. The guts of the reporting is from the New York Times; I added the…

It was a weekend-long conversation that I found both fascinating and frustrating. The four of us — Alan, Lois, Grace and I — were backpacking Easter weekend on top of Virginia, in the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area. If there’s an activity that lends itself to long, extended conversations, it’s backpacking. You wake together, you have breakfast together, you hike all day together, you have dinner together, you crawl into…

The conversation during our three days together backpacking the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area this past Easter weekend always seemed to come back to nutrition. Grace, Lois and Alan had carted in enough fresh produce to start a farmer’s market at our Rhododendron Gap campsite. Conservatively, I’d guess they had 45 pounds of food between them. I was relying heavily on prepackaged, come-to-life-with-boiling-water dehydrated food, from instant oatmeal in the…

Overhauling one’s diet can be overwhelming, what with every little nutritional nuance to keep tabs on. This week, instead of trying to ride herd over every aspect of your eating, focus on one: added sugars. A study presented at the American Heart Association’s recent Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism/Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention 2011 Scientific Sessions underscores what shouldn’t be surprising: added sugars contribute to weight gain. Data accumulated as…

The latest from the research world as it applies to our world … Chocolate: the new super fruit You’d expect scientific news about chocolate coming out of the Hershey Center for Heath & Nutrition to be favorable toward the brown elixir. And you wouldn’t be disappointed. Chocolate, which recently has been embraced as the ultimate recovery drink by recovering athletes, has been deemed by the Hershey center as a rich…

More reasons to stay active from the world of science. Pump up … your brain. One of my favorite types of studies is the one that shows a link between an active lifestyle and an active brain. The latest comes from the Centre for Hip Health and Mobility at Vancouver Coastal Health and the University of British Columbia, where a follow-up of women 65-75 who participated in a once-a-week strength-training…

Those of you who are in great shape yet feel betrayed — and baffled — by your BMI, take heart. A study released earlier this month by the American College of Sports Medicine finds that you can be in great shape, yet deemed overweight by your BMI. Seventy-one high school football players from seven schools were poked and probed in a variety of ways to determine their fitness levels. Based…

Sometimes — a lot of the time — it’s the small steps that get us headed in the right direction. That’s the thinking behind the Small Steps Web site  run by the government (the White House and the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services). Small Steps is a small but effective, non-overwhelming Web site that appreciates that people have various challenges to living a healthy life, not the least…

Have trouble prying your kids from the computer screen to go for a bike ride or play in the yard?  There’s an app for that. Or there will be if enough enterprising programmers heed the Apps for Healthy Kids competition being sponsored by First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! program. Apps for Healthy Kids is awarding $60,000 in prizes to individuals who can “create innovative, fun and engaging software tools…