obesity

A ban on opening or expanding stand-alone fast-food restaurants in low-income neighborhoods of Los Angeles has failed to curb obesity, says a RAND Corp study.

First Lady Michelle Obama "is enlisting some high-wattage star power — including actresses Jessica Alba and Kristen Bell, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and New York Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz — in a new national campaign to convince moms and teens to eat fruits and veggies," reports Politico.

The White House named Debra Eschmeyer, co-founder of FoodCorps, as the new executive director of the Let's Move! initiative of First Lady Michelle Obama against childhood obesity.

Forget about super-sizing. Portion size at three major fast-food chains changed little from 1996-2013, say researchers at Tufts. In a pair of reports, they say sodium, fat and calorie totals "stayed relatively constant albeit at high levels," according to a Tufts release.

Sam Kass, nutrition policy advisor at the White House and executive director of the Let's Move! initiative against childhood obesity, is leaving the White House, says the Wall Street Journal.

At the International Conference on Nutrition meeting in Rome, senior officials from 170 nations "made a number of concrete commitments and adopted a series of recommendations on policies and investments aimed at ensuring that all people have access to healthier and more sustainable diets," says the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

Researchers at the University of Buffalo say babies given foods high in sugar, fat and protein in their early months of life are more likely to eat less nutritious foods later in life.

The Republican-backed proposal to give some schools a waiver from school lunch reforms "will probably be back on the table" in the lame duck session of Congress, write two pediatricians in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Cornell, Purdue, North Carolina and Colorado State universities will establish research centers on nutrition education and obesity prevention with $3.4 million in funding from the Agriculture Department.

Researchers at a Boston Hospital discovered a hormone that could be the basis for a "fructose tolerance test," says Harvard University, which could identify people at risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

A survey of menus at the 66 largest U.S. restaurant chains found a new items on the menu contain 12 percent fewer calories, says a study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The obesity rate among U.S. adults doubled since 1980 to its current 35 percent. "We are starting to see signs of hope," say the heads of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Trust for America's Health in their "State of Obesity" report. It says childhood obesity rates stabilized in the past decade and the rate of increase in obesity among adults is slowing. "In 2005, every state but one reported an increase in obesity rates; this past year, only six states experienced an increase," it says. The six states are Alaska, Delaware, Idaho, New Jersey, Tennessee and Wyoming.

A series of 11 nutritional studies published in the journal Pediatrics indicate that dietary preferences are determined during infancy, says the New York Times. It says researchers compared the diets of 1,500 six-year-olds to their food patterns during their first year. Says the Times story: "(W)hen infants had infrequent consumption of fruits and vegetables, they also had infrequent consumption at 6,” said Kelley Scanlon, an epidemiologist at the C.D.C. and the senior author of a few of the new studies.

Mission: Readiness, composed of retired military officers, plans to lobby lawmakers against a school lunch waiver when Congress re-convenes after Labor Day, says Politico.

A "soda tax" of 1 cent per teaspoon of sweetener would be levied under a bill unveiled by Rep Rosa DeLauro, Connecticut Democrat, with the revenue used in programs to reduce obesity, diabetes and other health losses due to sugar-sweetened beverages. "There is a clear relationship between sugar-sweetened beverages and a host of other health conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, obesity and tooth decay," said DeLauro in a statement.

Besides overhauling the Nutrition Fact label on food packages, the FDA should mandate a summary of nutritional information on the front of the box, said former FDA commissioner David Kessler. Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, Kessler says such a label would list "the top three ingredients, the calorie count, and the number of additional ingredients...in bold, easy-to-read type."

First Lady Michelle Obama will fight for healthier school meals and the White House has made the issue a top priority, senior nutrition policy advisor Sam Kass told supporters, according to Obama Foodorama.

New population data show that in 23 of the 50 states, at least 35 percent of adults are obese, a startling increase in a decade, said the Centers for Disease Control. Before 2013, adult obesity did not reach these rates in a single state.