Health & WellnessS


Attention

Kids Get Schooled at McDonald's?

Meg Barone
ctpost.com
Tue, 02 Nov 2010 16:45 UTC
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© Meg Barone / Connecticut Post Freelance Jack Kyzer, 11, of Stratford, a 6th grade student at Eli Whitney School, gets help from Maria Pagan, building his own hamburger sandwich.
Stratford, Connecticut - Since 1955, McDonald's Corp. has served fast food, earning its designation as the world's largest fast-food hamburger chain, and as with most businesses, its emphasis was on the bottom line.

With the growing epidemic of childhood obesity and an escalation in rates of related health issues, McDonald's officials have said it also was good business to serve nutritional facts to young people.

About five years ago, the company initiated nutrition workshops, bringing schoolchildren into their local McDonald's restaurant to learn about calorie counts, sodium levels, fat content and other information about the importance of eating nutritious foods.


Comment: Nutrition workshops sponsored by McDonald's? This has got to be a joke! Read on, it is amazing how a corporation like McDonald's is using the excuse that they are 'teaching school kids about the importance of eating nutritional foods' while in reality they are pushing more of their toxic food!

Sounds like the recent story carried on SOTT:

McDonald's and PepsiCo to help write UK health policy
The Department of Health is putting the fast food companies McDonald's and KFC and processed food and drink manufacturers such as PepsiCo, Kellogg's, Unilever, Mars and Diageo at the heart of writing government policy on obesity, alcohol and diet-related disease, the Guardian has learned.
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Health

How a better diet could beat the suffering of hayfever


The Daily Mail
Mon, 15 Nov 2010 14:12 UTC
hayfever sneeze
© UnknownCan you beat hayfever by changing your diet?
While the rest of us welcome the lengthening days, Britain's ten million hayfever sufferers greet spring with dread at the prospect of months of sore, itchy eyes and violent sneezing.

The bad news is that this year could be far worse than normal, with the National Pollen Research Unit forecasting pollen levels five times higher than last year and close to the highest ever pollen count, recorded in 1992.

Hayfever (seasonal allergic rhinitis or pollinosis) is an allergic reaction - usually triggered by pollen, grasses or mould spores. It accounts for around 2.5 per cent of all GP visits and more than £50 million in medication costs.

Although conventional treatments include antihistamines and steroids, there are alternatives. One of the most interesting theories suggests that what you eat could significantly affect hayfever.
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Evil Rays

GPS addict? It may be eroding your brain

Joan Raymond
MSNBC
Mon, 15 Nov 2010 11:45 UTC
Jean Snyder says she isn't afraid of spiders, snakes or even dentists. But she is scared of one little thing: a GPS breakdown.

Snyder's 2005 Honda Odyssey is equipped with GPS, and for the last five years, Snyder hasn't looked at a map, noticed landmarks or even tried new routes to get from point A to point B. Instead, she relies on the disembodied voice of "Jackie," her GPS, to guide her.

"When it comes to finding my way, I've become a GPS zombie," says Snyder, a 47-year-old office manager in Highland Heights, Ohio."I'm sure I'm not doing my brain any favors."

Snyder might be on to something. Three studies by McGill University researchers presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience on Sunday show that the way we navigate the world today may indeed affect just how well our brains function as we age - particularly the hippocampus, which is linked to memory
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Family

Nonprofit Helps Educators Teach Empathy to Youth

Karen Anderson
.i-newswire
Mon, 15 Nov 2010 09:45 UTC
Lack of empathy, of which bullying is the most violent expression, is a critical issue facing our youth today. To many educators, the problem has almost taken on a life of its own, and surfaces in the classrooms, hallways and playgrounds in the form.

Rolling Prairie, IN, November 14, 2010 - Lack of empathy, of which bullying is the most violent expression, is a critical issue facing our youth today. To many educators, the problem has almost taken on a life of its own, and surfaces in the classrooms, hallways and playgrounds in the form of students being mean to each other.

University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research analyzed 72 studies on the empathy of nearly 14,000 college students between 1979 and 2009. Their report shows today's college students are about 40 percent lower in empathy than students two or three decades earlier.

Out of this concern, and the near loss of a teen to suicide, youth advocate, Betty Hoeffner, president of the youth self-esteem and empathy-building nonprofit, Hey U.G.L.Y. - Unique Gifted Lovable You - partnered with educators and curriculum writers to develop social and empathy learning programs geared for students aged 9 to 19. Called Empathy Learning Activity Plans (ELAPs) the nonprofit built in mandated learning standards in areas such as math, English, health and social studies to help teachers easily incorporate into their existing curriculums.
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Health

Why it really IS possible to die of a broken heart


Daily Mail
Mon, 15 Nov 2010 09:10 UTC
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© AlamyHeart broken: Researchers believe the pain of losing a loved one can kill
It really is possible to die of a broken heart, scientists have found.

The immense grief of losing a loved one means that many people die within three years of their husband or wife.

Researchers at St Andrews University have identified a 'widowhood' effect which they claim does not just affect elderly couples, also occurs amongst those in their 30s and 40s.

They found that 40 per cent of women and 26 per cent of men died within three years of their partner.

The study, which will be published next year in the journal Epidemiology, identified a range of causes including cancer, heart diseases, accidents and suicides.
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Cheeseburger

The Fast-Food Industry's $4.2 Billion Marketing Blitz

Tom Philpott
Grist
Wed, 10 Nov 2010 19:44 UTC
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© Oblivion999
Last week, I praised fast food, which has probably been around as long as people have lived in cities.

But there's a particular type of fast food that goes back just a half-century, dating to the post-war rise of car-centered cities and suburbs. It relies on regimentation, weird additives, flavor "engineering," super-cheap (but highly subsidized) ingredients, and super-expensive marketing. I won't bore you with why I think this type of fast food sucks; wouldn't want to be labeled a food snob!

But let's talk about that marketing. Yale's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity has just put out an extraordinary report [PDF] on fast-food industry marketing.

Here's the report's headline number: $4.2 billion, which is how much the industry spent marketing its wares in 2010.
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Evil Rays

Naked body scanners may be dangerous: scientists


Raw Story
Sat, 13 Nov 2010 19:41 UTC
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© NA

Washington - US scientists warned Friday that the full-body, graphic-image X-ray scanners that are being used to screen passengers and airline crews at airports around the country may be unsafe.

"They say the risk is minimal, but statistically someone is going to get skin cancer from these X-rays," Dr Michael Love, who runs an X-ray lab at the department of biophysics and biophysical chemistry at Johns Hopkins University school of medicine, told AFP.

"No exposure to X-ray is considered beneficial. We know X-rays are hazardous but we have a situation at the airports where people are so eager to fly that they will risk their lives in this manner," he said.
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Question

How Much Lead is Too Much?


CBC News
Mon, 16 Aug 2010 18:26 UTC
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© Pat Roque/Associated PressA store attendant arranges toys made by Mattel. The toymaker announced the recall of toys with small magnets or lead paint on Aug. 14, 2007.
Lead is a soft, naturally occurring metal used in many products. It can be found in contaminated soil or water, old paint, inexpensive jewelry and other consumer items, such as blinds and leaded crystal.

Too much exposure to the metal can cause serious illness. In young children, it can impair neurological development.

In its lead strategy, Health Canada identifies four categories of consumer products that children are likely to come into contact with and ingest in significant quantities, some of which may contain lead:
  • Products intended to be or likely to be placed in or near the mouth, such as pacifiers, baby bottle nipples, crib toys, mouthpieces of musical instruments.
  • Children's equipment, furniture, toys and other items intended for use by a child in learning or play, such as strollers and high chairs.
  • Products intended for use in preparing, serving or storing food or beverages, such as cutlery, tableware and cooking utensils.
  • Consumer products intended to be or likely to be melted or burned in enclosed spaces, such as candles and fuel for indoor lanterns.
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Health

Airport body-scan radiation under scrutiny

Marnie Hunter
CNN
Fri, 12 Nov 2010 11:11 UTC
They're arriving at airports across the country. Some complain they are invasive and an assault on our privacy. But are body scanners at security checkpoints dangerous?

Some scientists and two major airline pilots unions contend not enough is known about the effects of the small doses of X-ray radiation emitted by one of the two types of airport scanning machines.

The Transportation Security Administration's advanced imaging technology machines use two separate means of creating images of passengers -- backscatter X-ray technology and millimeter-wave technology.
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Evil Rays

Airport Body Scanners Under Pressure: Experts Now Warn X-ray Devices "could give you cancer"


Activist Post
Sun, 31 Oct 2010 10:18 UTC
tsa,scanner
© AFP/Getty ImagesDose of radiation may be 20 times higher than estimated

As we wrote in our newsletter this week: scanners and backscatter devices are under pressure from all sides. Despite the best efforts of Michael Chertoff and the TSA, word is out that Backscatter X-ray scanner technology that is being used in airports is exceedingly harmful, along with being an invasion of privacy.

An increasing number of people are becoming informed and are deciding to opt-out of the radiation and the X-rated detail of you and your family. Naturally, this has forced the TSA to threaten more invasive physical searches, as they try to coerce people into taking the "easier" option. This is a sign of desperation, since the success of these machines in airports will determine the future of their presence throughout America. They already are being deployed in street roving vans, and are most likely headed to a mall near you if the public doesn't continue to raise its voice.
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