Saying nuts to Nutricate? The apparent success and consumer popularity of municipal laws in New York City, Seattle, Philadelphia and elsewhere that require chain restaurants to post nutritional information on their menus means that (1) more American cities’ elected officials will propose simil...

Low energy density diet prevents weight gain Children who have a gene linked to an increased risk of obesity can prevent that fate by eating more fruits and vegetables, according to a report from the journal PLoS ONE. Looking at more than 2,000 children, researchers from University College London an...

Contributor: “Dr. J” Dr. J offers his irreverent, slightly irrelevant, but possibly useful opinions on health and fitness. A Florida surgeon and fitness freak with a black belt in karate, he runs 50 miles a week and flies a Cherokee Arrow 200. When Mike Tyson tried to explain his appetit...

Brits hoping to work off some of that baby fat How worried are they in Britain about the soaring obesity rates among children? This worried: some municipalities are ginning up “movercise” exercise programs for young kids, and by “young,” they mean as early as one year old. Th...

More TV predicts unhealthy diet If you need another argument for why your teenagers shouldn’t spend so much time watching television, a University of Minnesota study of 2,000 kids found that those who watched the most television were more likely to follow an unhealthy diet five years later. Those ...

The numbers are improving, unless they aren’t Things are looking up on the childhood obesity front. Or are they? Decide for yourself. The hard data, as reported in a recent issue of USA Today: In 1980, 7 percent of American kids ages 6 to 11 and 5 percent of those 12 to 19 were obese. By 1994,...

Former Iowa governor to be announced today Though the announcement was unofficial at the time of this writing, it was expected that Barak Obama would announce former Iowa governor (and very brief contestant for the Democratic nomination) Tom Vilsack as his nominee for Secretary of Agriculture. Vilsa...

As some of you know, I am certified by the American Council on Exercise as a personal trainer. ACE as it's called for short, is one of the largest if not THE largest certification trainer agencies in the world. You'd think that an organization of this size and strength would be vigilant in p...

Out of sight, out of stomach Waltham Forest, a neighborhood in east London, is about to try something that would initiate an absolute firestorm of controversy, to say nothing of litigation, if attempted in the United States, and may do the same there as well. The local council, supported by 93 perce...

The United States is the fattest nation in the world. We're also the most litigious. It's time for these two giants to meet. Two recent studies related to childhood obesity point to new hope for health-related lawsuits against "Big Fat" companies, like McDonalds, KFC and other makers of fast-foo...