Digging around, I found these … some might interest you:

Fast food| junk food| bowel cancer … an alarming rise in bowel cancer, and a diet of too much meat and fast food may be to blame, cancer experts in the …

Cindy: Maybe it’s the sausages and chips, not the folic acid fortified bread that’s causing all the problems?

Big fat lies and damned statistics | Duncan Fine …  Labor MP who chaired the latest House of Representatives inquiry into obesity in Australia, called Weighing It Up: Obesity In Australia. He opens the report …

Cindy: Very funny and a good explanation of how having lots of muscle can put you in the ‘over-weight’ BMI category. But carrying too much fat, especially around your tummy, does cause health problems and even if he thinks there is no ‘obesity epidemic’, I’ve sure noticed a lot more ‘chubbies’ around.

Healthy Airplane Snacks – How to Choose or Pack Healthy Airplane Snacks

Cindy: Healthy airplane snacks? I haven’t seen any recently on NZ domestic flights. It’s usually lollies, salty crispy things and rich biscuits. Mind you, flights in NZ are relatively short so you don’t really need to eat. For long flights or for hungry kids I take Vita Wheat crackers, nuts and raisins, dried fruit, small cartons of fruit salad with a plastic spoon and some mints.

Successful Weight Loss With Dieting Is Linked To Vitamin D Levels… vitamin D levels in the body at the start of a low-calorie diet predict weight loss success, a new study found. The results, which suggest a possible role for vitamin D in weight loss, were presented at The Endocrine Society’s 91st Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C …

Cindy: Every vitamin has its day – and in nutrition circles at the moment it’s vitamin D-day! So when the sun shines in between the clouds and rain, get outside to give yourself a dose of vitamin D. Us Kiwis really need it in the winter – especially those who have dark skin. And remember, you have to be outside – sun shining through glass won’t stimulate your skin to make vitamin D.

The more fast-food surrounds you – the higher your stroke risk: study | The National Business Review – New Zealand… risk of having a stroke is related to the number of fast-food restaurants near your residence according to a new study…

Cindy: Another cause and effect question. Are you more likely to eat fast food if there are lots around you or do fast food chains deliberately put more stores in areas where the people already like to eat fast food?

FT.com / Food & Drink – Carrots are the new caviar … deep in the website of El Bulli, Ferran Adrià’s legendary restaurant in Spain, is a revolutionary declaration: “All products have the same gastronomic value, regardless of their price…

Cindy: It’s great to see some top line restaurants elevating vegetables to star status. It’s every dietitian’s dream that we all eat – and enjoy eating – more veges!

Digging around I  found these nuggets…

Fat chance of tough love on the obese – Health – NZ Herald News …  Finally, an expert on human nutrition brave enough to tell us what we don’t want to hear …

Cindy here: article is opinionated, totally non-PC – and sensible! It backs up those good old sayings: ‘You are what you eat’ and ‘You reap what you sow’… (here’s my take on this story)

Row erupts over lap-band surgery to combat obesity | The Courier-Mail … OBESITY has become a financial battleground, with heated debate over who will pay for the soaring burden of the overweight on the public purse. This week, the parliamentary report Weighing It Up described obesity as “one of the last bastions of discrimination in our community”. Estimating thousands of morbidly obese people last year cost Australia $58.2 billion, the report urged the Federal Government to recognise obesity as a chronic disease and provide taxpayer-funded treatments – including lapbanding surgery …

Cindy: The numbers may stack up – saving so much on each person who has the operation – but people aren’t numbers. Who’s to say they won’t re-gain the weight?

The Human Condition : Stop Doing Sit-Ups – Why Crunches Don’t Work … Of course, it won’t matter how muscular your torso is if your body fat is too high. The best way to build strong, visible abs isn’t through repeated sit-ups, but by engaging in circuit training that has you working your entire core while you’re burning calories – and to keep yourself disciplined during meals. “If you want to burn your fat mass, make sure you have a combination of weight training and cardiovascular, but 90 percent of good abs is your nutrition …

Cindy: Great – I always hated sit-ups!

Multivitamins linked to younger ‘biological age’: Study

Cindy: Before you rush out to buy some multi-vitamins, read the story. Even the authors say that it could simply be that people who take multivitamin supplements are more healthy anyway.

Why Restaurants Make You Fat – Page 1 – The Daily Beast … Restaurant Syndrome: 1. Eat out. 2. Eat too much. 3. Feel bad. 4. Repeat. The Daily Beast’s Susan B. Roberts on why you do it—and five ways to minimize …

Great story from the USA with some practical tips. But I’m not sure how my family would react if I ‘accidentally’ spilled water on the chips!

Push for nutrition labels on junk food menus | The Courier-Mail … FAST food restaurants could soon be forced to display nutrition labels on menus, as part of the Rudd Government’s crackdown …

Cindy: Hmm… if I was hanging out for a burger and fries I don’t think I’d bother trying to work out which was the healthiest.

Men roasted in the kitchen | The Courier-Mail … ONE in three Australian men barely puts a foot in the kitchen and when he does he tends to be a monotonous cook trying to hog the limelight and demand movie star-like attention. That scathing description has been served up by corporate food producer, Nestle, in a new survey of …

Professor John Birkbeck, a highly respected nutrition icon in New Zealand, was very busy last week. If you’ve moved jobs and homes at the same time you’ll know what it’s like. But he still made time to spend an hour and a half with a reporter who wanted to interview him about his life and his career. Two stories came out of it: one about his life and career ‘The truth is – size matters’ NZ Herald 31/5/09, and another titled ‘Expert – it’s your fault if you’re a fatty’ NZ Herald 31/5/09.

It’s the second story that grabbed people’s attention, causing apparent ‘outrage’ and creating an ‘individual versus environment’ fat fight.

Here’s what I think happened. A second reporter read the original story and picked up a couple of potentially controversial and non-PC statements. She phoned the two obesity organisations mentioned in the story and said, “Professor Birkbeck said this. What do you think of that?”

The same thing happens in the playground and in the workplace – a comment used out of context – and it can blow things way out of proportion.

Sensible healthy eating stories don’t make ‘news’. There has to be some controversy, conflict or an ‘est’ – latest, greatest, first or worst. (I know the last two aren’t ‘est’ but I’m sure you get what I mean.) It’s even better if you have an ‘expert’ quote – either a person or the latest study.

As readers we tend to skim stories, picking up meaning from the heading and the first paragraph. Often the real balance in a story lies in the last few paragraphs where many of us don’t read to, or embedded in the story where a light skim may miss it.

This story is a great example of media sensationalism and it trivialises an incredibly complex question – why are we getting fatter and how can we stop it? As Professor Birkbeck said, “If I had the answer, I’d be rich!”

Follow-up story in NZ Herald 7/6/09 – “Fat chance of tough love on the obese”

Shoppers of the future will ‘pick’ fruit from supermarket shelves – Telegraph … Supermarket shoppers in the next decade will be able to pick fruit and vegetables from plants still growing on the shelves, according to a report into the future of retailing…

Cindy here: Still a long way off but it could help kids realise that fruit comes from a plant not a pack!

Expert: It’s your fault if you’re a fatty – Health – NZ Herald News … A leading expert in human nutrition has caused outrage by calling “over-fatness” a self-inflicted burden on the taxpayer. Professor John Birkbeck, adjunct professor in human nutrition at Massey University, said anti-obesity efforts won’t work until society refuses to accept the condition as normal and healthy, as it has done for smoking…

Cindy: Look for my upcoming post on this news item soon…

Lapband surgery to be publicly funded | The Courier-Mail … TAXPAYERS could soon be funding the cost of weight loss surgery for thousands of obese Australians who are too poor to pay for the operations themselves…

Cindy: This is major surgery and a drastic measure which doesn’t always work long term if they don’t deal with the reasons why they over-ate in the first place. Of the few cases I studied as a student dietitian, they all regained weight after two years – sometimes by melting the chocolate biscuits in their cup of tea!

Weight-Revealing Billboard Shames Fatties into Joining Gym | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

Hmm – a novel idea. But will seeing our weight up in lights convince us to join the gym? If I’m already feeling bad about myself it will probably just drive me to relieve the pain with some more chocolate! And who cares about weight anyway? What’s more important is how much fat and muscle you have. If you don’t have much muscle you can weigh light on the scales but still be quite flabby. At the other extreme, if one of our super-fit, muscle-bound All Blacks sat on this seat the scale would flash up anywhere from 80-100kg. Does that tell you he needs to join the gym and lose weight? I don’t think so!