Would you put your baby or toddler outside in the freezing cold for their lunchtime nap? Most Nordic parents wouldn't give it a second thought. For them it's part of their daily routine.

Daytime temperatures this winter in Stockholm have regularly dropped to -5C (23F) but it's still common to see children left outside by their parents for a sleep in the pram.

Wander through the snowy city and you'll see buggies lined up outside coffee shops while parents sip on lattes inside.

And if you are visiting friends and your child needs a nap, you may be offered the garden or balcony instead of a bedroom.

Researchers from Vanderbilt University recently found that disruptions in the body's circadian rhythm are associated with increased risks of developing obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

Past studies have looked at the relationship between the body's metabolism and the operation of the body's biological clock. This study is the first to definitively prove that the body's circadian biological clock controls insulin activity.

A hormone produced in the body's pancreas, insulin helps in controlling the body's fat and carbohydrate metabolism. Carbohydrates are broken down during the digestive process into simple sugars called glucose; the glucose is then absorbed into the bloodstream. Insulin also works on transferring glucose into the body's cells, allowing excess glucose to be removed from the blood. When insulin's ability in removing glucose from the blood is diminished, it is known as insulin resistance. Researchers found that, during inactive phases, the body is more sensitive to insulin than high activity periods. As such, glucose is changed into fat during inactive phases and engaged in tissue building or other forms of energy during active phases.

"That is why it is good to fast every day...not eat anything between dinner and breakfast," commented Carl Johnson, a professor of biological sciences at Vanderbilt University, in a statement.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, the circadian rhythm, otherwise known as the "internal body clock," manages the body's 24-hour cycle of biological processes and is found in both plants and animals.

For those just getting started on a gluten free diet, the task can be very daunting. Identifying what to and what not to avoid is where most people get stuck or frustrated. Below we have put together a video and a list of some of the most common foods that will get you into trouble while following a gluten free diet...

1. Grains

As part of the gluten free "Golden Rule", grains should be avoided to prevent reactions to gluten. The most common items are bread, pasta, cereals, muffins, bagels, cookies, and cakes. But there are many more food items on this short list that commonly contain grains - gravies, croutons, bread crumbs, biscuits, rolls, pita, batter-fried foods, noodles, tortillas, ice cream cones, bran, wheat germ, dumplings, pancake mixes, pies, pumpernickel and rye breads, cornbread, vermicelli, doughnuts, buns, pretzels, spaghetti, waffles and pastries. Many companies have started making gluten free versions of these products. Problem is - they are not TRUE gluten free. Other grains like corn and rice are commonly used as alternative safe substitutes despite the research showing their detriment. For more on this, you can view our comprehensive page on food terms to avoid while eating a gluten free diet.

On the evening of April 8, 1999, a long line of Town Cars and taxis pulled up to the Minneapolis headquarters of Pillsbury and discharged 11 men who controlled America's largest food companies. Nestlé was in attendance, as were Kraft and Nabisco, General Mills and Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Mars. Rivals any other day, the C.E.O.'s and company presidents had come together for a rare, private meeting. On the agenda was one item: the emerging obesity epidemic and how to deal with it. While the atmosphere was cordial, the men assembled were hardly friends. Their stature was defined by their skill in fighting one another for what they called "stomach share" - the amount of digestive space that any one company's brand can grab from the competition.

James Behnke, a 55-year-old executive at Pillsbury, greeted the men as they arrived. He was anxious but also hopeful about the plan that he and a few other food-company executives had devised to engage the C.E.O.'s on America's growing weight problem. "We were very concerned, and rightfully so, that obesity was becoming a major issue," Behnke recalled. "People were starting to talk about sugar taxes, and there was a lot of pressure on food companies." Getting the company chiefs in the same room to talk about anything, much less a sensitive issue like this, was a tricky business, so Behnke and his fellow organizers had scripted the meeting carefully, honing the message to its barest essentials. "C.E.O.'s in the food industry are typically not technical guys, and they're uncomfortable going to meetings where technical people talk in technical terms about technical things," Behnke said. "They don't want to be embarrassed. They don't want to make commitments. They want to maintain their aloofness and autonomy."

A chemist by training with a doctoral degree in food science, Behnke became Pillsbury's chief technical officer in 1979 and was instrumental in creating a long line of hit products, including microwaveable popcorn. He deeply admired Pillsbury but in recent years had grown troubled by pictures of obese children suffering from diabetes and the earliest signs of hypertension and heart disease. In the months leading up to the C.E.O. meeting, he was engaged in conversation with a group of food-science experts who were painting an increasingly grim picture of the public's ability to cope with the industry's formulations - from the body's fragile controls on overeating to the hidden power of some processed foods to make people feel hungrier still. It was time, he and a handful of others felt, to warn the C.E.O.'s that their companies may have gone too far in creating and marketing products that posed the greatest health concerns.

Growing up as a working-class kid in the North in the Sixties, food was incredibly limited. It wasn't like today, where everyone has groaning cupboards of unused goods; we had just enough food to get through each week. Meals were plain and boring, but everything was wholesome and home-cooked.

Food changed a lot in the Seventies, with a lot more processed foods becoming available. In 1979 I turned 18 and by then was a bit of a hippy. I was 10 years out of date; this was when punk was really big and I was just getting into Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead. It was around then that I started to think differently about food. By 1982, I was living in the North of Scotland in a sort of croft with my partner, Dawn. Two years later, we decided to stop eating meat because we used to see all the cattle taken away to the slaughterhouse and we were growing a lot of our own food anyway. That's where the adventure into vegetarianism, wholefoods and healthy eating started.

People didn't really get us and I was considered a bit of a freak for my diet. But then in the mid-Eighties, copying American guidelines, the British government's healthy-eating advice changed and it started encouraging people to base their diets on carbohydrates rather than protein and fat. By the early Nineties, the whole "five-a-day" thing came into play and diets that included a lot less animal and saturated fat and even vegetarianism became the default healthy-eating advice. With things such as salmonella in eggs, BSE in beef and the rest of it, the diet we'd chosen based on wholegrains­, lentils, pulses, fruit and veg, and all that other groovy stuff, made us seem like we'd been ahead of the curve.

Like most nutritionally oriented doctors out there, I certainly have my opinions when it comes to diet, one of the strongest of which is that I do not believe there is any one, single dietary approach that is ideal for everyone. We are individuals, and some of us require individualized dietary plans that can run the gamut of the various options out there.

Low carb? High carb? Low fat? High fat? Paleo? Vegan? USDA Food Pyramid? What is the right answer? Again, my feeling is, it depends. 

That is unless we are taking about one particular food.....

Dairy.

In my practice, I routinely request that my patients do a therapeutic trial of avoiding dairy (and possibly other foods), to see how their bodies respond. More often than not, doing provides a tremendous benefit. For some, it can be life changing.

What about calcium and my bones?

The argument against avoiding dairy I hear the most involves calcium and the concern people have (especially parents) that avoiding dairy, which is touted to be the best source of calcium for us, would mean you will get deficient in calcium. A quick review of the scientific literature and common sense would reveal that:

1. The calcium in dairy products are poorly absorbed. Therefore, even though the amount in them is high, the amount we get from them is relatively low.

2. There are numerous other foods out there that provide a significant source of more usable calcium. According to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, here are the top food sources of calcium and their relative absorption rates. Do we need dairy products for calcium? You be the judge:

Yahoo News recently carried an article about the list of ingredients that are banned across the globe but still allowed for use the USA. The people at 100daysofrealfood.com took a deeper look at the topic of banned foodstuffs in the context of failing American health rate.

For example:

• More than two thirds of United States citizens are overweight - 33% being obese.
• 32% of children are either obese or overweight.
• 43% of Americans are projected to be obese in 10 years.
• Obesity is America's biggest cause of premature death and is linked to 70% of heart disease and 80% of diabetes cases.
• And 41% of Americans are projected to get cancer in their lifetime!

Bolivia's President Evo Morales on Wednesday slammed western fast food as "a threat to humanity" as he accused multinational firms of seeking to block the development of his country's staple food. Morales said US companies had led a campaign to stop the United Nations declaring 2013 as the international year of quinoa, which the Bolivian leader and UN chief Ban Ki-moon launched at the UN headquarters.

The grain-like quinoa is packed with vitamins and proteins and has been grown in the Andes for 7,000 years. But its cultivation was long banned by European colonizers. Now Morales and many experts are pushing quinoa as a potential answer to global food shortages.

The left-wing Bolivian leader slammed capitalist "fast food" for causing cancer and other diseases, in a speech to the UN General Assembly to launch the commemorative year.

"The fast food of the west is a great harm to humanity," the left-wing leader stormed in a speech in which he said capitalism had been a prime cause of climate change.

"International companies opposed with great force the announcing of the international year of quinoa. They were led by the United States," he said.

"These companies are trying to make sure that the year of quinoa will be a failure" because it will drive up the price and make the product less available.

A new study clearly documents that the standard treatment for type 2 diabetes is a killer, resulting in more than double the deaths. The treatment justification has always been based on irrelevant criteria - just as it is with most pharmaceutical treatments.

It seems so intuitive: People with diabetes should inject insulin. In the case of people with type 1 diabetes, in which the pancreas doesn't produce insulin, that's probably true. However, modern doctors routinely give insulin to people with type 2 diabetes simply because it reduces blood sugar levels.

The reality, though, is that type 2 diabetics who take insulin injections die at more than double the rate of those given non-insulin treatment!

Just two weeks before the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) fully deregulated Monsanto's Roundup Ready alfalfa, a senior soil scientist alerted the department about a newly discovered, microscopic pathogen found in high concentrations of Roundup Ready corn and soy that researchers believe could be causing infertility in livestock and diseases in crops that could threaten the entire domestic food supply.

Dr. Don Huber, a plant pathologist and retired Purdue University professor, wrote in a letter to the USDA that the pathogen is new to science and appears to significantly impact the health of plants, animals and probably humans.

"For the past 40 years, I have been a scientist in the professional and military agencies that evaluate and prepare for natural and manmade biological threats, including germ warfare and disease outbreaks," Huber wrote in his January 16 letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack.

"Based on this experience, I believe the threat we are facing from this pathogen is unique and of a high risk status. In layman's terms, it should be treated as an emergency."