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...

I have to admit I didn’t really cook anything interesting last week, but writing about acai berries yesterday got me interested in trying out the super juice for myself. At my local natural foods store I found a lot of juice blends that contained acai, often in combination with other fruit jui...

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. Addiction is a stern master! If you choose t...

A proposal by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick to levy a 5 percent surcharge tax on sugar-laden snacks and beverages, pitched by his office as “a critical first step in discouraging the consumption of these empty calories,” has raised again some basic questions about the wisdom and p...

The self-defeating “I exercise, therefore I nosh” syndrome Researchers at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana were surprised, and you may be, too. They had conducted a research program that took three groups of overweight women and had them engage in different levels o...

Twice as much potassium as sodium cuts heart risk Getting twice as much potassium as you do sodium could cut your risk of death from cardiovascular disease in half. That’s the conclusion of a study from Loyola University Health System in Chicago, which looked at people who weren’t asked to chang...

Most young kids’ play is sedentary A study looking a three-, four- and five-year-olds enrolled in community-based preschool programs found that 89 percent of the kids’ physical activity could be described as sedentary activity, while 56 percent of activities were sedentary during outdoor playtim...

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 ...

Kids who need vitamins usually don’t take them Children who are taking vitamins are often the ones who don’t really need them, while kids who could benefit from supplements because of their poor diets usually don’t take vitamins. That’s the conclusion of a study from the University of Califo...

Like father, like daughter, not so much CalorieLab colleague Dr. J sent the following item my way, and an interesting item it is, about Grant, age 40, whose weight got up to some 380 pounds, and his daughter Emma, age 15, who in reaction to his weight problem developed one of her own, but not the on...