In each ADA survey since 1991, ADA has used respondents’ answers to a number of different questions to segment consumers into three groups representing people’s overall attitudes toward maintaining a healthy diet and getting regular exercise:

• I’m Already Doing It: Consumers who feel that maintaining a healthy diet and regular exercise are very important; are concerned about diet, nutrition and overall fitness; and feel they are doing all they can to eat a healthy diet.
• I Know I Should: Consumers who feel that maintaining a healthy diet and regular exercise are very important, but may not have taken significant actions to do all they can to eat a healthy diet.
• Don’t Bother Me: People who do not feel diet and exercise are very important to them and are the least concerned with their overall nutrition and fitness.

Results of ADA’s 2008 survey show the percentage of people in the Don’t Bother Me category has dropped substantially, especially from 2002 (32%) to 2008 (19%). "This is the first year the Don’t Bother Me group has represented less than one-third of the population," said registered dietitian and American Dietetic Association spokesperson Jeannie Gazzaniga-Moloo. She noted that the segment had been as large as 40 percent in the mid-1990s.

"The steady increases we are seeing among the I’m Already Doing It segment appear to represent movement away from Don’t Bother Me, while the I Know I Should remain relatively constant – 38% in 2008, and 30% in 2002.

"These trends tell us people are paying more attention to their nutritional and physical activity needs and are increasingly doing what they need to do to eat right and be healthy," Gazzaniga-Moloo said.

"The findings indicate there will likely always be a core group of consumers who remain in the Don’t Bother Me segment, so our challenge as registered dietitians is to move as many people as possible, through healthful eating messages and nutrition-related health-care services, from I Know I Should – the people who ‘get it’ – into I’m Already Doing It," Gazzaniga-Moloo said.

According to ADA’s 2008 survey, two-thirds of consumers said diet and nutrition are "very important" to them personally (67%), and three in five said physical activity is very important (61%). This continues an upward trend that has been occurring since ADA’s first survey in 1991.

"It’s great to see these trends continue to head upward, but there is definitely still room for improvement in Americans’ eating and physical activity habits," Gazzaniga-Moloo said.

Women were more likely than men to say diet and physical activity both are very important, while younger adults were much less likely than older people to consider diet and nutrition very important. Meanwhile, physical activity is seen as very important by all age groups, representing slight but consistent increases in recent years.

And people with a college education and beyond were more likely to say diet and nutrition are very important than people with a high school degree or less.

The American Dietetic Association is the world’s largest organization of food and nutrition professionals. ADA is committed to improving the nation’s health and advancing the profession of dietetics through research, education and advocacy. Visit the American Dietetic Association at http://www.eatright.org.

Source: ScienceDaily.com

So take stock of your eating preferences and lifestyle when you choose a diet. Your ability to stay with it long term depends in part on whether it fits easily into your lifestyle and doesn’t leave you feeling deprived. So if your job requires four-night-a-week client dinners, then ultra-low-fat options might be hard to manage. But it’s not hard to find a diet in which you add healthy omega-3 fats, such as salmon or mahi mahi or halibut, to your life. If you don’t know how to turn on an oven, choose something that lets you rely on prepared foods. Also consider whether you’ll feel deprived by the elimination of a food group if you choose a diet that requires that (although we don’t recommend it, unless you consider Nilla Wafers and french fries to be food groups).

So don’t let the endless weight-loss options give you diet paralysis. Pick a program with a combination of balanced, nutritious eating habits and regular exercise (of course, we’re partial to the YOU Diet! That’s our easy and tasty version of Mediterranean remade for American and Canadian tastes), and you’ll triumph in the game of healthy waist size for life.

TO SUBMIT QUESTIONSTO Mike Roizen and Mehmet Oz — the YOU DOCS — visit RealAge.com, the docs’ online home. The doctors are authors of "YOU: The Owner’s Manual" and "YOU: On a Diet."

White rice, bread from refined flour,beets, carrots, refined sugar, corn syrup, molasses,honey, sugared colas, corn, and beer.

10 Steps To Eliminate Sugar from Your Diet

1. Admit you eat sugar in tremendous portions every day!

2. Believe that you can eliminate refined sugar from your diet!

3. Ask your doctor or health care provider if eliminating refined sugar from your diet will be beneficial for you.

4. Check with relatives, friends & family members to see if they eat foods that are high in sugar. Discuss your past diets of high sugar items. Tell them your plan for eliminating certain high sugar foods from your diet. Ask them to tell you about their daily sugar intake.

5. Discuss your plans to eliminate certain high sugar foods from your diet with your doctor or health care provider.

6. Be ready to change your lifestyle and eating habits. You cannot expect different results by doing the same things over and over!

7. Ask your doctor, healthcare provider, friends and family members how you can change your previous bad habits & replace them with new ones.

8. List items that need to be thrown out and replaced in your refrigerator and cabinets. Use Stevia, a natural sweetener, to replace refined sugar. Read all labels at the grocery store for sugar content. Hint: try all fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains and organic dairy products and organic meats. Add supplements like Multi Vitamins, Vitamin E, B complex, Vitamin C to your diet.

9. Complete a full day without eating any refined sugar. Have another friend try this new diet with you for support & encouragement.

10. Continue to change your eating habits little by little. It will take awhile before your habits become established. Be patient. If you eat a dessert item, forgive yourself. Try to do better each day. Strive for progress, not perfection.

After you eliminate most refined sugar from your diet, have your doctor take your blood tests with your new diet in mind. You will see an improvement of 40 to 60 precent in your test results! Pass this information on to everyone you know! You have my permission to reprint, reproduce, and forward to your friends and relatives.

While weight-loss programs and products are still an estimated $58 billion industry, the number of people dieting is dropping, according to market-research firm NPD Group. Among a group of 5,000 consumers, in 1990 39% of the women and 29% of the men claimed to be on a diet; today, the numbers are 26% and 16%, respectively.

Instead, these people appear more interested in eating whole grains, fiber and omega-3 fatty acids than following the latest diet craze. That may be a good thing, but new research has found that some diets are more effective than was previously realized. Important–perhaps as much as what diet you choose–is how you choose a program.

The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine this summer, followed more than 300 moderately obese Israelis for two years, assigning them to one of three diets: a low-fat, calorie-restricted diet; a Mediterranean diet high in fiber; and a low-carb diet.

Although we’ve been conditioned to think that low-fat diets are the best way to lose weight, the results didn’t bear that out. On average, those on the low-fat diet only lost 6.5 pounds, compared with 10 pounds on the Mediterranean diet and 10.3 pounds on the low-carb diet.

While the diets proved equal at helping inflammatory and liver function biomarkers, other results varied greatly. The low-carb diet increased levels of good cholesterol and cut levels of atherosclerosis-causing triglycerides the most. The low-fat diet increased fasting glucose, high levels of which are a sign of diabetes, while the Mediterranean diet caused a decrease.

"The importance of this study," says Iris Shai, the study’s leader and a researcher at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, "is that there is no one solution for everybody."

Sticking With the Program

In fact, experts say a wide variety of diets can work–if only people can choose programs that are sustainable for them and find ways to stick it out.

People commonly derail their diets from the get-go, says Heidi Skolnik, a certified nutritionist and health-fitness instructor at the Hospital for Special Surgery, by having unrealistic expectations about how much weight they’ll lose–and how quickly they’ll do so. They also want the process to be easy. When that doesn’t happen, they give up and move on to the next thing, a process that isn’t good for the body or mind.

"Yo-yo dieting messes with your head," Skolnik says. "It’s very demoralizing. Each new time, you’re more reluctant to get your hopes up, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Skolnik recommends figuring out your ideal body, taking into account your height and frame, and then thinking about what’s going to be realistic for you to achieve and maintain.

You’ve also got to consider your food preferences, goals and diet histories and consult your doctor before starting anything, says Shai. For instance, if a diet calls for you to cut back on your carbs drastically and you love bread and pasta, the likelihood of your success is low. As great as a diet may be, if you can’t think about it as a long-term strategy, it’s probably not worth trying. Likewise, if you want to lower your cholesterol levels or control your diabetes, you’ll want to factor that into your decision. And if you’ve tried diets in the past and failed to see results–who hasn’t?–examine what went wrong.

What kind of diet has worked for you? Weigh in. Add your thoughts in the Reader Comments section below.

Your personality plays a role, too, Skolnik says. Do you respond better in situations that are structured or more flexible? Do you perform better when you’re backed by a support network or when you’re on your own? Honestly answering these questions can help you figure out if you would be better off buying a diet book or participating in a weight-loss program that offers regular meetings.

Before choosing a diet you should also look for a few key factors, says Stacey Snelling, a registered dietitian and an associate professor at American University in the health and fitness department. Those include scientific evidence backing up the diet’s effectiveness and some component of physical activity to help you maintain your weight loss down the road. On the other hand, diets that recommend the use of supplements are worth questioning since they might be lacking in nutritional adequacy. Furthermore, it’s not clear whether pills provide the same health benefits as the foods from which they’re derived.

The Bottom Line

For those who are still dieting, or whose ears can’t help but perk up when news of the next diet fad hits, there is hope. It’s possible dieters can improve their odds of success, experts say, if they spend time upfront making sure they pick sound diets that match their goals and personalities.

"You should know which diet you can live with," Shai says, "not a dramatic diet for the short term, but for the long term."

Source: Forbes

Question: Can I ever stop taking medicine for high blood pressure to see if diet and lifestyle changes have brought my blood pressure back to normal?

Answer: Hypertension (high blood pressure) is the most common form of cardiovascular disease in North America, affecting nearly one in three adults. High blood pressure is a threat because it makes the heart work harder, increasing its oxygen demands and contributing to angina (chest pain related to heart disease).

Unchecked, high blood pressure increases the risk of heart attacks, stroke and kidney disease. Some people can lower and control their blood pressure with healthy lifestyle measures — losing weight if necessary (even a 10 per cent weight loss might do the trick), quitting smoking if that’s an issue, limiting intake of caffeine and alcohol, as well as cutting back on salt (processed foods are the biggest sources of sodium in today’s western diet) and practising relaxation methods.

The last of these may be the most important, yet doctors often fail to emphasize the importance of learning how to relax the involuntary nervous system, which controls the tone of blood vessels. Meditation, yoga, breathing exercises and biofeedback training can all help. I recommend that you also check out a simple device called RESPeRATE (resperate.com) that teaches you to lower your blood pressure by changing your breathing patterns.

If you’ve made and are maintaining these lifestyle changes, you might then try to cut down on your blood pressure medication. Do so gradually, and be sure to monitor your pressure at home — at least two to three times a day, both when you are calm and when you are not — to make sure that it doesn’t start to rise. If it does, you’ll have to return to the usual dosage of your medication. It would be best to make these changes under the supervision of your physician so you will not be alone in your efforts.

A large study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published in the May 4, 2007, issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report found while most Americans who have high blood pressure are trying to bring it under control, 70 per cent of them have failed.

The CDC researchers collected information on more than 101,000 people and found that of the nearly 25,000 who had high blood pressure, 98.1 per cent, said they were doing at least one thing to lower it. Nearly 71 per cent said they had changed their eating habits, 79.5 per cent said they had reduced or eliminated the salt in their diets, 79.2 per cent either didn’t drink or had cut back on alcoholic beverages, 68.6 per cent exercised and 73.4 per cent were taking medication. But the study showed that those efforts paid off in only 30 per cent of all cases.

If you have a family history of hypertension, lifestyle measures may not be enough to keep your blood pressure under control — you probably will need some medication. But no one should depend on drugs alone. A healthy lifestyle, including relaxation practise, is also key to keeping blood pressure in the safe range.

Dr. Andrew Weil is director of the program of Integrative Medicine of the College of Medicine, University of Arizona. He is an internationally recognized expert on medicinal plants, alternative medicine and the reform of medical education.

Source: The Calgary Herald

You continue to lose weight for another couple of weeks, and then something happens: you start to feel sluggish, you begin craving something that your diet absolutely forbids you to have, or the general sense of optimism begins to transform itself into a feeling of constriction, frustration, and even dietary imprisonment.

You decide to have just one snack, or spend just one day eating whatever you want with the intention of going back to the diet the following day. What happens then, is that you feel such satisfaction from that treat that the entire effort falls apart and you put the weight back on in practically no time at all.

Does this scenario sound at all familiar?

Diets are very hard, as is the feeling of being overweight. Many of these fad diets may promise instant and significant weight loss results, but most of them rely on depriving your body of certain nutrients and disrupting the natural function of your body’s metabolism. Chinese medicine considers obesity to be partly the result of declining function of the metabolic fire of the kidney network and a diet that provides a well-balanced array of nutrients is the key to losing weight in a healthy way. What follows are five foods that will help you restore your body’s ability to use energy and help you become your healthy weight.

• Millet: A well-balanced diet should consist of whole grains instead of refined grains like white rice and pasta, and millet is a beneficial and delicious staple of this category of food. This non-glutinous grain is over 10-percent protein, has high amounts of fiber and B-complex vitamins, and because it isn’t an acid forming food, is easy to digest.
• Asparagus: When losing weight, it’s important to favor chlorophyll-rich foods, including asparagus. Asparagus is a nutrient-rich vegetable packed with folate, vitamins A, C, and K, and fiber. Asparagus also contains a carbohydrate known as inulin (not to be confused with insulin) that promotes healthy bacteria in the large intestine – which in turn promotes a healthier digestive function.
• Pomegranates: Eating a balanced diet to lose weight should include eating fresh fruits, and pomegranates are a wonderful example of a healthy, nutritious fruit that has antioxidant properties and will help prevent cancer. While the benefits of drinking pomegranate juice have gained a lot of attention recently, you will be more likely to lose weight by eating the fruit fresh to increase your fiber intake and keep the calories down.
• Pine Nuts: Pine nuts are the edible seeds of pine trees and are considered an essential ingredient in the tasty Italian mixture pesto. Chinese medicine uses pine nuts to improve gastrointestinal tract and digestive functions, and pine nut oil is even used for appetite suppression. Pine nuts and other nuts are a tasty part of a well-balanced diet intended for weight loss.
• Green Tea: It has been found that consuming large amounts of coffee and caffeine can lead to food cravings, increase one’s appetite, and induce stress-related eating. Green tea is a wonderful alternative to coffee in that it does provide a little caffeine but also contains beneficial antioxidants. So drink up!

A healthy diet also includes lean proteins like chicken breast, legumes such as lentils, and other whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. While fad diets may promise a large amount of weight loss in a short period of time, there’s almost a guarantee that you will put that weight back on-and then some!

Eat five smaller meals a day, avoid processed foods, chew more slowly, and incorporate more healthy foods into your diet-starting with these five. Also, click here to learn more about the Tao of Wellness B-Slim dietary supplement, which will help you lose weight naturally.

I hope this article helps you find foods that can aid in your weight loss goals! I invite you to visit often and share your own personal health and longevity tips with me.

May you live long, live strong, and live happy!

Source: myjoyonline.com

That doesn’t mean they’re giving up on health or even weight loss. Instead, consumers and nutritionists say they are seeing a shift toward «positive eating» — shunning deprivation diets and instead focusing on adding seasonal vegetables, nuts, berries and other healthful foods to their plates.

For 32-year-old Rina Gonzalez-Echandi of Los Angeles, giving up calorie counting and packaged foods and adding real food back into her diet has helped her maintain her weight and even be happier. She used to watch fat and calories so obsessively she would sometimes avoid socializing.

«You forget how wonderful it is to have a meal with friends and family,» said Ms. Gonzalez-Echandi, a special-education aide and mother of a 10-year-old daughter. «I realize I had taken that joy away from myself.»

Now she focuses on the pleasure of eating fresh, home-cooked food. She has started cooking with olive oil and occasionally butter, and has increased her consumption of nuts and peanut butter. She even got to know her grocer to find out which fruits and vegetables are in season and grown locally.

The market research firm NPD Group gets a glimpse of national eating habits through the food diaries it has collected from 5,000 consumers since 1980. The percentage of those consumers who are on a diet is lower than at any time since information on dieting was first collected in 1985. At the peak in 1990, 39 percent of the women and 29 percent of the men were dieting. Today, that number has dropped to 26 percent of women and 16 percent of men.

The diarists also report eating more organic foods and whole grains, said Harry Balzer, an NPD vice president.

«Instead of trying to avoid things, they’ve started adding things,» Mr. Balzer said.

Even the Calorie Control Council, which represents makers of commercial diet foods, notes the percentage of people who are dieting has declined — to 29 percent in 2007 from 33 percent in 2004.

And there are other indicators of a shift in eating habits. In May, the market research firm Information Resources reported that 53 percent of consumers say they are cooking from scratch more than they did just six months ago, in part, no doubt, because of the rising cost of prepared foods.

Sales of organic foods have surged, and the number of farmers’ markets has more than doubled since the mid-1990s.

Nutrition experts and consumers say positive eating trends are being fueled in part by the failures of the past. A national epidemic of obesity suggests that the spread of diet foods, sugar-free soft drinks and low-fat snacks hasn’t helped people manage their weight.

Cynthia Sass, a New York dietitian and author who was a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association from 2001 to 2007, said many clients embrace positive eating after years of failed dieting. “They would much rather focus on what to eat instead of what not to eat,” Ms. Sass said. “Most people I have encountered have a track record of trying different things that didn’t work for them.”

Meanwhile, books like Gary Taubes’s «Good Calories, Bad Calories» (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007) and Michael Pollan’s «In Defense of Food» (Penguin, 2008) have prompted a rethinking of Americans’ eating habits and dependence on processed and refined foods.

Martha McClintock, 46, of Riverdale, in the Bronx, said she was more focused these days on adding healthful foods like avocados, blueberries and walnuts to her plate. She said she tries to improve the quality of food she eats, such as switching to blue corn chips as a snack rather than potato chips.

«If something is high in calories, I try to look at the big picture,» said Ms. McClintock, a photo service account executive. “If you’re going to indulge in something, just try and walk it off or limit it to once a week.”

Some former dieters say they’ve been influenced by the international Slow Food movement, a 10-year-old group that encourages locally grown, unprocessed food. Over the Labor Day weekend an estimated 60,000 people attended the Slow Food Nation festival in San Francisco.

Alice Waters, of the restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., and a prominent supporter of the Slow Food movement, said food habits change when a person begins to cook at home more. Her efforts to encourage home cooking include a new campaign of Internet cooking videos from the Slow Food Nation event, such as one from the chef Bryant Terry, who showed how to strip corn from the cob and saute it with chili.

«We need to demystify cooking,» Ms. Waters said. «It creates feelings about food that make you feel cared for, and that’s the kind of food that really changes habits.»

The cookbook author and television personality Rachael Ray has attracted both loyal followers and harsh critics for creating food that doesn’t focus on calories, fat, carbohydrates or even portion control. She intentionally doesn’t include calorie information with her cookbook recipes.

«I think that puts your head into science and away from what I think the experience of food should be,» Ms. Ray said. «If you take the time to cook and provide yourself with a balanced diet, you can cook freely and eat pretty freely and in pretty large amounts without worrying so much about the nutritional intake or the calories or your pant size.»

Some nutritionists aren’t convinced that the positive eating trend will catch on with time-strapped families. Others worry that people will wrongly interpret positive eating as over-indulging, rather than adding moderate amounts of healthful foods into the diet.

«If everyone ate more plant-based and more whole foods and unprocessed foods, that would be major,» said Arlene Spark, associate professor of nutrition at Hunter College in New York. «But that would mean people going back to cooking, and what we’ve lost is people’s ability and knowledge of how to cook.»

The real question, is whether better eating can translate into weight loss.

Last year, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported on a study of 97 obese women, all of whom were avoiding high-fat foods. Half the women were instructed to increase their consumption of fruits and vegetables. By the end of a year, the women who were focused on adding vegetables lost an average of 17 pounds, 20 percent more than the women who were just paying attention to fat consumption.

Also, the more time people spend on tasks like food shopping, cooking and kitchen cleanup, the more likely they are to be of average weight. The Economic Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture found that people of normal weight spend more time on meal-related tasks than people who are overweight or underweight.

Marion Nestle, the New York University nutritionist whose book «What To Eat» (North Point Press, 2006) focuses on sensible eating, said she thinks people view food as the enemy, when the real problem is that they have forgotten how to enjoy food in a healthful way.

«If you’re eating something you really like, maybe you won’t feel like you need to eat so much of it,» she said. «If you want a muffin, then eat a gorgeous muffin with marvelous blueberries that’s moist and crispy on the outside with a little sugar on it. Yum.»

Source: New York Times

«Chocolate milk, chocolate chip muffins, chocolate chip pancakes — it was unbelievable,» said Ms. Worobey, director of the Rutgers University Nutritional Sciences Preschool in New Brunswick, N.J. «His mother just thought, ‘That’s what he wants, so that’s what I’m going to do.’ «

While most parents haven’t resorted to the chocolate diet, they can relate to the daily challenge of finding foods that children will eat. Although obesity dominates the national discussion on childhood health, many parents are also worried that their child’s preferred diet of nuggets and noodles could lead to a nutritional deficit.

Fussiness about food is a normal part of a child’s development. Young children are naturally neophobic — they have a distrust of the new. Even the most determined parents can be cowed by a child’s resolve to eat nothing rather than try something new. As a result, parents often give in, deciding that a bowl of Cocoa Puffs or a Pop-Tart, while not ideal, must be better than no food at all.

«I think parents feel like it’s their job to just make their children eat something,» Ms. Worobey said. «But it’s really their job to serve a variety of healthy foods and get their children exposed to foods.»

A series of simple meal-time strategies can help even the pickiest eater learn to like a more varied diet. Here’s a look at six common mistakes parents make when feeding their children.

Sending children out of the kitchen With hot stoves, boiling water and sharp knives at hand, it is understandable that parents don’t want children in the kitchen when they’re making dinner. But studies suggest that involving children in meal preparation is an important first step in getting them to try new foods.

Researchers at Teachers College at Columbia University studied how cooking with a child affects the child’s eating habits. In one study, nearly 600 children from kindergarten to sixth grade took part in a nutrition curriculum intended to get them to eat more vegetables and whole grains. Some children, in addition to having lessons about healthful eating, took part in cooking workshops. The researchers found that children who had cooked their own foods were more likely to eat those foods in the cafeteria, and even ask for seconds, than children who had not had the cooking class.

When children are involved in meal preparation, «they come to at least try the food,» said Isobel Contento, professor of nutrition education at Teachers College and a co-author of the study. «Kids don’t usually like radishes, but we found that if kids cut up radishes and put them in the salad, they love the radishes.»

Pressuring them to take a bite Demanding that a child eat at least one bite of everything seems reasonable, but it’s likely to backfire.

Studies show that children react negatively when parents pressure them to eat foods, even if the pressure offers a reward. In one study at Pennsylvania State University, researchers asked children to eat vegetables and drink milk, offering them stickers and television time if they did. Later in the study, the children expressed dislike for the foods they had been rewarded for eating.

«Parents say things like ‘eat your vegetables and you can watch TV,’ but we know that kind of thing doesn’t work either,» said Leann L. Birch, director of Penn State’s childhood obesity research center and a co-author of the study. «In the short run, you might be able to coerce a child to eat, but in the long run, they will be less likely to eat those foods.»

The better approach is to put the food on the table and encourage a child to try it. But don’t complain if she refuses, and don’t offer praise if she tastes it. Just ask her if she wants some more or take seconds yourself, but try to stay neutral.

Keeping ‘good stuff’ out of reach Parents worry that children will binge on treats, so they often put them out of sight or on a high shelf. But a large body of research shows that if a parent restricts a food, children just want it more.

In another Penn State study, researchers experimented to determine whether forbidden foods were more desirable. Children were seated at tables and given unlimited access to plates of apple or peach cookie bars — two foods the youngsters had rated as «just O.K.» in earlier taste tests. With another group, some bars were served on plates, while some were placed in a clear cookie jar in the middle of the table. The children were told that after 10 minutes, they could snack on cookies from the jar.

The researchers found that restricting the cookies had a profound effect: consumption more than tripled compared with when the cookies were served on plates.

Other studies show that children whose food is highly restricted at home are far more likely to binge when they have access to forbidden foods.

The lesson for parents? Don’t bring foods that you feel the need to restrict into the house. Instead, buy healthful snacks and give children free access to the food cabinets.

Dieting in front of your children

Kids are tuned into their parents’ eating preferences and are far more likely to try foods if they see their mother or father eating them. A Rutgers study of parent and child food preferences found that preschoolers tended to like or reject the same fruits and vegetables their parents liked or didn’t like. And other research has shown girls are more likely to be picky eaters if their mothers don’t like vegetables.

Given this powerful effect, parents who are trying to lose weight should be aware of how their dieting habits can influence a child’s perceptions about food and healthful eating. In one study of 5-year-old girls, one child noted that dieting involved drinking chocolate milkshakes — her mother was using Slim-Fast drinks. Another child said dieting meant «you fix food but you don’t eat it.»

A 2005 report in the journal Health Psychology found that mothers who were preoccupied with their weight and eating were more likely to restrict foods for their daughters or encourage them to lose weight. Daughters of dieters were also more likely to try diets as well. The problem is, restrictive diets don’t work for most people and often lead to binge eating and weight gain. By exposing young children to erratic dieting habits, parents may be putting them at risk for eating disorders or a lifetime of chronic dieting. «Most mothers don’t think their kids are soaking up this information, but they are,» Dr. Birch said. «They’re teaching it to their daughters even though it doesn’t work for them.»

Serving boring vegetables Calorie-counting parents often serve plain steamed vegetables, so it’s no wonder children are reluctant to eat them. Nutritionists say parents shouldn’t be afraid to dress up the vegetables. Adding a little butter, ranch dressing, cheese sauce or brown sugar to a vegetable dish can significantly improve its kid appeal. And adding a little fat to vegetables helps unlock their fat-soluble nutrients. The few extra calories you’re adding are a worthwhile tradeoff for the nutritional boost and the chance to introduce a child to a vegetable.

Giving up too soon Ms. Worobey said she has often heard parents say, «My kid would never eat that.» While it may be true right now, she noted that eating preferences often change. So parents should keep preparing a variety of healthful foods and putting them on the table, even if a child refuses to take a bite. In young children, it may take 10 or more attempts over several months to introduce a food.

Sibling dynamics and friendships can also change a child’s eating habits. Dr. Birch of Penn State noted that her first child was always willing to try new foods, but that her second child was not. «Part of it was just him defining his place in the family,» she said. By the age of 10 or 11, he didn’t want to be outdone by his sister and was far more willing to try new foods.

Susan B. Roberts, a Tufts University nutritionist and co-author of the book «Feeding Your Child for Lifelong Health,» suggested a «rule of 15» — putting a food on the table at least 15 times to see if a child will accept it. Once a food is accepted, parents should use «food bridges,» finding similarly colored or flavored foods to expand the variety of foods a child will eat. If a child likes pumpkin pie, for instance, try mashed sweet potatoes and then mashed carrots. If a child loves corn, try mixing in a few peas or carrots. Even if a child picks them out, the exposure to the new food is what counts.

«As parents, you’re going to make decisions as to what you want to serve,» Ms. Worobey said. «But then you just have to relax and realize children are different from day to day.»

Source: New York Times

«Certainly you can control it to some extent,» she said about type 2 diabetes.

Here are the tips:

• Provide children with more foods from natural sources (e.g. fruits, whole grains and vegetables) and less processed and fast foods.
• Offer youngsters a regular meal pattern at home. Try to cut down on their snacking.
• Avoid sugar
• Encourage children to exercise regularly
• If a child is at risk, go for annual check-ups

Source: Joanna Broder, pioneerlocal.com

Slimmers began to eat healthier food when they were asked to take a picture of what they were eating, scientists found.

The pictures appear to have concentrated the dieters’s mind at just the right time, before they were about to eat, the researchers who carried out the study believe.

Photographs were also more effective at encouraging volunteers to watch what they ate than traditional written food diaries.

To test if encouraging slimmers to photograph everything they eat might also encourage them to change their diet, scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison asked

43 people to record what they ate for one week in pictures as well as in words.

When the volunteers were later quizzed the photo diary appeared more effective at encouraging them to change their eating habits to more healthy alternatives.

The photographs also acted as a powerful reminder of any snacking binges, the researchers found.

«I had to think more carefully about what I was going to eat because I had to take a picture of it,» was a typical response from volunteers, the scientists found.

Prof Lydia Zepeda and David Deal, the researchers who carried out the study reported in New Scientist magazine, found that written food diaries were often filled in hours after the meal and were not as powerful in creating an impression of how much food had been consumed.

«Nutritionists see diaries as recording tools. Now they should explore the role of photo diaries as intervention tools,» Prof Zepeda said.

Frankie Phillips, a dietician with the British Dietetic Association, said that photographs could also help dieticians to identify if a patient is eating too large a portion size.

«Many patients tend to underestimate how much they are eating, especially when it comes to things like takeaway portions,» she said.

Source: telegraph.co.uk, By Kate Devlin Medical Correspondent