Assorted news from the research world to get your week kick started: Green exercise? Really pressed for time? Is carving out 60 minutes a day to work out, as recommended by the National Institutes of Health, beyond the pale of your schedule? Even 30 minutes broken into bite-size 10-minute segments isn’t doable? According to a study in the current issue of the American Chemical Society’s “Environmental Science & Technology” journal,…
Story in today’s The News & Observer about the high cost and other challenges of feeding kids a healthy lunch at school. Healthy food is more expensive — and thus costs the kids/parents more — and because most high schools at least let older kids leave campus over lunch, there’s competition from the outside. I believe McDonald’s Dollar Menu was mentioned. There is one alternative that gets short-shrift in this…
As he stood next to a stack of books and a table full of killer food Sunday afternoon at the Barnes & Noble across from Cary Towne Center, the icons of Matt Goulding’s life were within 50 yards. Across Maynard Street was Cary High School, where Goulding graduated in 1999; at the far end of the parking lot was Macaroni Grill where he rose from busboy to the chain restaurant’s…
While fitness and health experts would like you to get an hour’s exercise a day, they’ll tell you that, above all, the key thing is to just move. With that in mind, here are a number of Earth Day “just move” events this weekend. (Yes, technically Earth Day isn’t until Thursday. But Thursday doesn’t fall on a weekend, this Saturday and Sunday happen to.) Most involve a short hike, followed…
The latest fitness news from the research world: Don’t have a stroke. And if you’re a woman, you’ll be less likely to have one if you walk two hours or more a week at a “brisk” pace. This according to a study published in “Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association,” which found that women exercising at this level were 37 percent less likely to have a stroke of any…
The latest fitness news from the research world … Weight training-related injuries up If you use free weights don’t drop them, especially on yourself. A just-released study conducted by the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital finds that injuries from weight training increased nearly 50 percent between 1990 and 2007, largely the result of males dropping weights on themselves. The study, to…
As you go about your weekend, here’s something to think about from page 35 of Barry Popkin’s “The World is Fat: The Fads, Trends, Policies, and Products That Are Fattening the Human Race”: “The average American Adult consumes 115 calories more per day on Friday, Saturday and Sunday than they consume on weekdays.” (FYI, there are 115 calories in an ounce of peanut butter, a half cup of boiled black…
Tuesday morning I was at a Brains & Bodies workshop conducted by Advocates for Health in Action, a consortium of local public and private sector groups “shaping a community where healthful eating and physical activity are the way of life.” Brains & Bodies is a program of the Wake County PTA designed to encourage healthy habits in our schools. Healthy habits such as PTA fundraisers that eschew cookie dough sales…
Wondering what you can do as part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move program to stop the super-sizing of our kids? If you have preschoolers, you can do three things according to a study to be published in the March Pediatrics. Eat dinner as a family (at the table, not on TV trays assembled in front of the “Family Guy”). Make sure your preschooler gets at least 10.5 hours…
The joke at our house (at least I think it’s funny) is that when the latest “O” arrives, I exclaim with mock surprise, “Oh, look! Oprah’s on the cover.” This morning, the February 2010 issue showed up on the kitchen table. I was waiting for the coffee to finish, I didn’t feel like going out in the rain to fetch the Sunday paper, so I started thumbing through. Here’s what…