By Ian Marber

1 Get your Calcium Enhance calcium levels by eating things that help its action or absorption, such as inulin (in asparagus, garlic and Jerusalem artichokes) or essential fats (omegas 3 and 6)

2 Love probiotics Taking a high-quality capsule ensures a decent amount of good bacteria survive digestion. They help reduce cholesterol, raise B-vitamin levels and improve immune function

 3 Keep a balance Taking individual supplements may create high levels of one nutrient to the detriment of another. Take a mineral complex rather than individual minerals

4 Avoid ’super’ foods They are a product of super-marketing. You would do just as well, if not better, to eat four apples as have a handful of exotic and expensive berries

5 Take the right supplements Rather than self-medicate, consult a nutritional therapist to see what you need

6 Allergies are rare Some people would have you believe that nearly all of us are intolerant of or allergic to some food or another. This isn’t the case. Always consult a doctor before cutting out food groups

7 Don’t crash diet Dieting too quickly alerts the body to potential famine. If you need to lose weight, do so slowly and with an understanding of how long it should take

8 Get the right education Learn about nutrition, not dieting. Eating well has countless benefits, yet many see food as something that makes them either fat or thin

9 Be prepared Ensure you have cans of beans and legumes in the larder. They can be added to soups or salads to supply protein and fibre to even the most rushed meal

10 Mind your language Don’t speak ill of overweight people in front of children. We blame the media for images of super-thin celebrities but our own attitudes to fat are just as bad

By David Brough

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - Scottish doctors came within a whisker of passing a motion calling for a “fat tax” on chocolate last week, and the doctor behind the move said chocolate was a root cause of increasing obesity.

“Certainly the U.S. and the UK are affected by rising levels of obesity,” David Walker, a family doctor in Airdrie, western Scotland, who proposed the motion, said.

“If the British government is serious, they should tax chocolate in the same way as they tax alcohol,” he said in a telephone interview.

Walker said on Wednesday that Britain had witnessed almost a doubling of cases of type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity, in the past 15 years.

In Scotland, nearly one in four people are obese, he added.

He said British people’s fondness for chocolate must explain in part the growing obesity problem, because chocolate is high in calories, fat and sugar.

Chocolate was one of a number of factors, including growing affluence and more sedentary lifestyles, that had contributed to Britain’s fatter society, Walker said.

The Scottish doctors’ conference in Glasgow on March 12 defeated the motion to tax chocolate by just two votes.

Walker’s call attracted vigorous debate in the national media as healthy lifestyle becomes an increasingly hot topic.

The UK Food and Drink Federation, the voice of the companies in the sector, lambasted Dr Walker’s message.

“Introducing regressive taxes on the foods that consumers love would result only in lighter wallets, not smaller waists — particularly as we already have to pay VAT on all our chocolate purchases,” said Julian Hunt, director of communication.

“While good for grabbing headlines, there is no evidence to suggest that such ‘fat taxes’ would actually work in reality.”

Walker said the positive health benefits of chocolate, such as the antioxidants in dark chocolate, which cut risks of cardiovascular disease, are counterbalanced by chocolate’s contribution to obesity due to its high calories.

“Chocolate should be treated with respect — it should be treated as a luxury item, a special treat,” Walker said.

“It should be eaten quite infrequently.”

Walker said he admitted to feeling guilt over the impact a chocolate tax might have on impoverished West African cocoa farmers if demand for chocolate fell.

“That is certainly something that has pricked my conscience,” Walker said.

“It would take a very brave government to tax chocolate,” he added

(Reporting by David Brough; editing by Paul Casciato)

From www.news.bbc.co.uk, posted Thursday 19th March

More NHS trusts should be offering cash vouchers as incentives to people who adopt healthier lifestyles, a government adviser says.

Professor Julian Le Grand, chairman of Health England, said financial incentives could be key to reducing smoking, alcohol and obesity rates.

He said vouchers could be exchanged for anything from food to gym membership.

Some trusts are running pilot projects, but the government said there was no consensus about their effectiveness.

In Dundee, smokers are being offered £12.50 a week to spend on groceries if they go a week without smoking.

They are not allowed to spend the money on cigarettes or alcohol.

In Birmingham health officials have set up a scheme where participants who pursue healthy activities receive points, which they can then redeem for tickets to sporting events and shopping vouchers.

Both schemes are in their early days, but Professor Le Grand, who is chairman of Health England, which advises the government on public health, said he wanted to see other parts of the NHS following suit.

“There is growing evidence that financial incentives work. Smoking is the obvious place to start, but incentives could also be used to tackle obesity and drinking,” he said.

“I think it is hard to put the case for offering people cash directly, but vouchers seems a logical way to go.

“These could be used to buy anything from food and gym membership to furniture. Anything that helps an individual’s well-being.”

The London School of Economics expert pointed out that the use of negative financial incentives, such as increasing the price of alcohol as put forward by England chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson earlier this week, was gaining more support.

But he said the NHS could also learn from countries where positive financial incentives were being used.

In Germany, social insurance contributions are reduced if people attend services such as smoking cessation, screening and dieting classes.

He also cited Newcastle University research which showed people were nearly 60% more likely to increase exercise levels when given financial incentives.

Support

His suggestion received the backing of the Liberal Democrats.

Norman Lamb, the party’s health spokesman, said with health inequalities widening, the government’s target-based approach was not working.

“Incentive schemes could be an important part of tackling health inequalities, provided that they are well thought out and evidence based.”

A Department of Health spokeswoman said NHS trusts were free to pursue incentive schemes.

But she warned there was still no consensus about their effectiveness.

“Research is ongoing to establish whether this kind of intervention can enhance success rates.”

Professor Chris Drinkwater, the public health lead for the NHS Alliance, which represents primary care trusts in the health service, said: “I think we will see more trusts trying these out.

“But one major problem is that they are often hard to police and without firm evidence they work, it can be hard to justify the spending.”

By nisha bhatia

San Francisco

Neurologist Dr. Dean Ornish, a clinical professor at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and founder of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute, maintains that changing life style and improving eating habits can bring about positive and healthy changes at a genetic level.

The latest study suggests that adopting a healthier lifestyle and eating habits can make an individual healthy inside out by bringing about powerful and dynamic changes in the brain. Ornish remarks, “when you live healthier, eat better, exercise, and love more, your brain cells actually increase.”

“Eat More, Weigh Less” is one of the best-selling books he has written. But, primarily, Ornish is popular for advocating lifestyle-based approach to combat heart disease.

The neurologist has an outstanding expertise on fighting illness, specifically heart disease, with minor and major dietary and lifestyle changes. He believes that a balanced and holistic approach to health can be really effective against all external ailments.

The current study revealed that walking for three hours per week for only three months caused so many neurons to grow that it actually increased the size of people’s brains.

According to Ornish, foods that increase the brain cells include chocolate, tea, blueberries, alcohol (moderate), stress management and cannabinoids. Unhealthy foods that are responsible for decreasing brain cells are saturated fat, sugar, nicotine, opiates, cocaine, alcohol (excessive) and chronic stress.

Changing lifestyle improves blood circulation in skin, slows ageing process and increases blood circulation in heart. These healthy changes reverse heart diseases by measurably unclogging the clogged arteries over a period of time, the neurologist stated.

Also, it was found in the study that the risk of developing prostate cancer decreased significantly by implementing changes suggested by Ornish. As the study participants adopted healthy lifestyle and eating habits, an improvement in the blood flow within the sexual organs was seen, which increased potency.

Ornish concluded that bringing about healthy alterations in diet and lifestyle stimulates and activates disease preventing genes and, at the same time, suppresses disease promoting genes.

At present, Ornish is working with food corporations to help prevent America’s obesity endemic from spreading.

Gyms seem to be the fitness choice for thousands but other indoor sports are far more beneficial.

By Al Robertson, Middlesex Squash general secretary

It’s the biggest killer in England and one that kills an American every 34 seconds. Yes its heart disease, but these days we’re all unfazed by shocking statistics and bored of preaching about taking exercise and drinking less.

The Government says it wants to stop a worrying trend in obesity levels by next year. Last January, Health minister Alan Johnson announced a £372 million strategy to tackle the problem. One of the more worrying statistics was in child obesity whereby three in ten children aged two to 15 are obese.

January saw gyms overflowing with well intentioned people trying to change their lifestyle. The problem is not the lack of knowledge or good intention, neither is it joining a club but it is sticking to it.

The gym becomes intimidating, droves of miserable people queuing to use a sweaty cross-trainer, looking cynically at your choice of trainers. Slowly the anxiety creeps in, is this really worth it?

Maybe I will try that diet again? Anything has to be better than this humiliation. Perhaps squash is the answer? If fat burning is what you are looking for, then try this for a shocking statistic: top players burn about 25 calories a minute. That’s a glass of chardonnay every five minutes.

Obviously you are not going to do that right away, but even a fraction of that is a good start, plus there are many other benefits to a racket sport. As soon as you organise a game, you have something to look forward to at the end of the working day, a finishing point to work towards and most importantly someone to let down if you don’t turn up.

The temptation to sack off the gym after work is huge, but if you do, when you get home you feel depressed as you failed to accomplish a relatively simple task. You reach for the wine, but you can’t as your off that too. More depression.

There are more clubs than you think in the UK: plenty of people at your standard willing to play in the morning, during lunch or weekends plus it’s often included in the membership. A little adhering to an exercise regime will breed feelings of achievement and combine with the knowledge that you are moving away from becoming a cardiac statistic.

But, most importantly this will feed your determination to keep going, and that’s what it is all about: making permanent and lasting changes. If that’s not enough to convince you, check out some other peripheral areas of benefit: joint care, vascular health, back pain, depression, alcohol and drug over use and dependency.

Aim to be fit and healthy, not skinny, obesity experts say

BY DARLA CARTER – (LOUISVILLE,KY) COURIER-JOURNAL – March 1, 2009

Oprah Winfrey’s battle with weight has garnered much attention because of her fame and her penchant for letting the world in on her personal heartbreaks and triumphs. But shimmying up and down the scale isn’t unique to Oprah. In fact, regaining weight is the norm and not just because of a lack of willpower.

Experts cite many reasons for weight regain, including:

• Relying on fad or crash diets that often make people feel deprived.

• Practicing bad habits, such as skipping meals, that lead to overeating.

• Setting unrealistic weight-loss goals.

• Not having enough support.

There also are the everyday pressures that can get in the way of healthy eating and exercise, as well as the whole idea of changing one’s life temporarily to achieve weight loss.

“When you go on a diet, it usually implies you’re going to go off a diet,” says Lexington, Ky., dietitian Maria Boosalis. “What I think we need to focus on … is what habits and what practices do we need to incorporate in our way of life to achieve and maintain a healthy and realistic weight for us?”

But even when people try to adopt long-term changes, they often find it hard to maintain their new lifestyle because their own bodies work against them.

“Dieting leads to re-gain, and that’s because we have an enormous amount of biology that is pushing us to maintain a particular weight,” says Randy Seeley of the University of Cincinnati’s Obesity Research Center. When you lose weight, hormone levels change, and your brain reads that as ”
‘By the way, I’m beginning to starve to death,’ and does things to your body to push you in the opposite direction, so it hunkers down, makes you burn less calories and makes you hungrier,” he says.

“The ability to have a willpower over this level of biology is very difficult,” he says.

Often, people wind up repeatedly losing and regaining 5 or 10 pounds to 50 pounds or more, according to the federal Weight-control Information Network.

Those yo-yoers include Winfrey, who knows what it’s like to go from hefty to svelte to hefty again. She worked her way down to a trim 160 pounds in 2005 but recently lamented hitting the 200 mark again. “I thought I was finished with the weight battle,” she wrote in an essay in the January issue of her O magazine. “I was so sure, I was even cocky. I had the nerve to say to friends who were struggling, ‘All you have to do is work out harder and eat less!’ “

But then karma set in, in the form of a hectic schedule, a thyroid problem, heart palpitations, food addiction and more, according to the essay.

These days, Winfrey is trying to turn things around. She’s doing cardiovascular exercise and adhering to “common-sense basics,” such as “eating less sugar and fewer refined carbs and more fresh, whole foods like fish, spinach and fruit,” according to the essay. But her goal, she says, isn’t to be thin, according to the magazine. It’s “to be strong and healthy and fit.” That may be a more realistic goal, for some people, than pledging to be skinny. “There are definitely yo-yo dieters, but there are a lot of people who learn to maintain it,” says Dr. Julie Temes Ellis, an internist with Associates in Internal Medicine in Louisville. “Finding the diet and the exercise program that works for you is what’s important.” Realistic goals Boosalis, who is a registered dietitian, says nutrition professionals can help determine a realistic weight for clients by looking at such factors as their current weight, their health status and their body mass index (an indicator of body fatness).

A dietitian also can serve as a cheerleader and can help pinpoint bad habits, such as skipping meals and eating out too much, that might be contributing to weight gain, says Nancy Kuppersmith, a registered dietitian.

Seeing a doctor also is sometimes recommended. Ellis sees a lot of patients from their 20s to 50s who have health issues that are related to their
weight, such as high blood pressure, high blood sugar and back and knee pain. But after losing weight, “they feel better and their numbers are better and they get that positive reinforcement and they’re able to be more successful because of that,” she says.

Effects of yo-yoing

It’s unclear whether weight cycling is detrimental to health, according to the Weight-control Information Network. Some studies suggest a link to such problems as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and gall bladder disease, it says. But some of the research has been criticized, and a network publication on weight cycling still encourages people who are overweight or obese to try to achieve and maintain a modest weight loss, noting, “an initial
goal of losing 10% of your body weight can help in your efforts to improve overall health.”

If setbacks occur, Ellis says, “you encourage them to try again, in hopes that this time is going to be the one that sticks.”