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...

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...

Sprints may be best for diabetes prevention If one of your goals in working out is to reduce your risk of developing diabetes, experts say just a few minutes of intense exercise may do the trick. Researchers at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh found that working out hard for as little as 7.5 minu...

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...

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...

Workplace program gets people moving A program at Home Depot stores across the United States and Canada got workers moving, such that after 12 weeks 51 percent of workers met federal guidelines for physical activity, meaning they were getting moderate activity at least 30 minutes a day five days a w...