Forget Happy Meals, sweet and computer games-here are 10 ways to get your children on the road to a healthier life.

According to the Government’s National Diet and Nutrition survey, 92% of children consume more saturated fat than the maximum recommended level for adults, and 83% consume added sugars higher than suggested adult levels. Not surprisingly, our children are getting fatter, and many experts are warning that the problem is getting out of hand. For the first time, there’s a very real chance that parents could start outliving their offspring, due to obesity-related diseases such as cancer and heart disease.

Here are some tips and ideas on how to keep your kids healthy.

1. Honesty is the best policy

Try to resist sneaking vegetables onto your plates – children are not stupid! Instead encourage them to help you in in the kitchen and explain to them what ingredients you are using and why they’re healthy .Show them how tasty sauces can be when you add some chopped veg. 

2. Avoid the dirty dozen

Some ingredients found in pre packed food especially those marketed at children  may be detrimental to their health. According to Organix, these are 12 offenders and where they can be found :

a)       Mechanically recovered / separated meat – sausages

b)       MSG E621

c)       Sodium 5-ribonucleopeptide E635 – snacks

d)       Aspartame – soft drinks, snacks

e)       Acesulfame K – snacks and soft drinks.

f)        Sodium saccharide – snacks and soft drinks.

g)       Sodium benzoate E211 – many soft and fizzy drinks and food sauces

h)       Sulphur dioxide E220 – soft drinks and some meat

i)        Artificial colorings.

j)        High salt content – processed food such as tomato ketchup and soup.

k)       Hydrogenated and saturated fat – fatty foods like take-aways, burgers, chocolate and crisps.

l)        Refined sugar – sugary foods and cereal bars.

3. Exchange bad for good

There are so many easy ways you can swap junk food for healthier alternatives without losing out on flavour.

4.Don’t be too strict

Tastes for salty and sweet foods are developed early in life. So, it is OK to let your children take sweet food like fruit desserts,rice puddings and custards as they supply important nutrients such as vitamin C, calcium and protein. But make sure they eat a generally balanced diet.

5.What makes a good lunch?

School lunches have had a bad press of late, so turn your back on pre-packed produce and make your own lunches that are brimming with good nutrition.

a)      Keep the fats healthy – nuts, seeds, and olive oil all contain unsaturated fats which are good for health.

b)      Wholegrain reign – If you are sending them off to school with a sandwich, opt for more nutritious wholegrain varieties of bread rather than refined white bread.

c)      Think before they drink – It’s no good packing them a feast of raw vegetable if it’s washed down with a can of mirinda or pepsi. Give your kids milk, water or pure fruit juice.

d)     Variety is the spice of life – Boredom can result in children picking at meals and then snacking later on fatty items.

6.  Snack Attack

When hunger strikes, serve them with something that will not only keep the kids fulfilled but full of calories. Here are some child-friendly options: crackers, home made popcorn,yoghurt,raisins and rice cakes.

7. Dump the junk

Check out these 3 great ideas for getting more healthy foods into junk-food mad kids, from What Really Works for Kids by Susan Clark.

• Make frozen yoghurt to keep in the freezer. Just add pureed fruits to live plain yoghurt and freeze.
• Enhance the nutritional value of daily staples by adding fruit to breakfast cereals, yoghurt and ice creams.
• Thicken sauces with vegetables purees instead of cream and milk.

8.  Keep a well stocked fruit bowl

Instead of stocking up the sweetie cupboard, pile the fruit bowl high with tempting fresh produce.

9.  Make fitness fun

One of the main reasons for childhood obesity is lack of physical activity. If your children are not particularly active,don’t worry. Kids are naturally active, so should not really need much encouragement to get involved in energetic pursuits.

10. Find TV alternatives

The prevalence of TV and computers combined with parents’ reluctance to allow their offpring out to play in parks and public places has been blamed for our children’s increasingly sedentary lifestyle. Another worry is that children who watch TV four hours of TV a day are exposed to as many as 40 food commercials. This barrage of advertising is often aimed specifically at children and promotes high fat, unhealthy food. So what can you do?

a)      Monitor what they watch on TV.

b)      Round up your children’s friends and head for the park. The kid can run around and let off steam.

c)      Draw up a chart and reward kids with a star every time they eat portion of fruit or veg.

d)     One evening a week, switch the TV off and play a family games.

What is a balanced diet for children?

A balanced diet should include the following food groups:

1. Fruit and vegetables ( at least 5 portions per day )

2. Bread,other cereals and potatoes ( with every meal )

3. Milk and dairy products ( several servings per day )

4. Meat, fish and vegetarian alternatives ( 1 or 2 servings a day )

5. Foods containing saturated fat and refined sugar should be limited.

* If you are at all concerned with your child’s health then you should always consult your GP.

It goes by one name, sounding harmless, but it’s really something quite different, and not harmless at all.  Hydolyzed vegetable protein is really monosodium glutamate, or MSG.

MSG is that chemical that everyone knows Chinese restaurants use.  Why do they use it?  Simple:  to make the food taste better; more appealing, so you want to eat more of it, more often.  But that added flavor comes with a high price.

Many natural health practitioners and some conventional doctors and researchers, as well, believe that MSG falls into the category of “excitotoxins”.  In the 1960’s, a neuroscientist named John Olney discovered two neurotransmitters, glutamate (MSG) and aspartame, which overly excite brain cells, causing brain damage.  Moreover, the age of a person seems to be an important factor, with very young infants and children and the elderly being at higher risk.

There’s much more that can be written about this topic, but the main facts have been presented here.  MSG deserves attention as Americans scrutinize food and its production processes more carefully.  It has been liberally added to many common foods since the 1940’s when it began to appear even in baby food.  Many people report severe headaches, rashes, breathing problems, and other symptoms when eating foods containing MSG.  There are two sides to this issue and you will find people who say it’s not a problem.  However, if you study the chemistry of it, and listen to reputable people, using common sense, you will probably agree with those that suggest caution and even elimination.  Is brain damage worth the risk?  Could food possibily taste delicious without chemical additives?

To be fair to the “conventional” medical community, a link to the Mayo Clinic’s assessment on MSG has been provided here.  Do the research–read opposing views, and then you be the judge; it’s your health.

Source : Examiner.com

Smoking impacts appearance

If you smoke, you already know you need to quit. It’s bad for your heart, lungs, brain, and even your sex life.

But let’s face it: You’d have kicked the habit yesterday if smoking’s ill effects were a bit more obvious. What if each cigarette created a black pockmark on your face, for instance?

Well, smoking does damage your looks. Read on to discover 15 ways smoking is ruining your appearance. Continue reading »

PTI, 25 January 2010, 12:00am IST

LONDON: In what could revolutionise healthcare for the rising diabetes population worldwide, scientists claimed to have developed a 15-minute  non-surgical treatment that could lead to drastic weight loss and reverse the onset of the disease.

The breakthrough treatment, considered a cheap and safe alternative to surgery, involves a device called EndoBarrier — a plastic sleeve that is inserted into the intestine of a patient to prevent food being absorbed into the body.

The device, developed by a United States-based company, is fed through the mouth using an instrument called an endoscope while the patient is awake, the Daily Express reported.

“Obesity surgery can be risky simply because of the patient’s weight and the fact that you are giving them a general anaesthetic. That’s why it’s so good to have a non-surgical approach,” said Keith Gersin, head of obesity surgery at Carolinas Medical Centre in Charlotte, North Carolina, which has been trialling the EndoBarrier sleeve for 18 months.

“It is so quick to fit that you can get lots more patients treated. The patients loved it so much they didn’t want us to remove it at the end of the trial period. We had no significant side effects and it was easily removed.”

Extensive tests of EndoBarrier have been carried out in the US and Europe and last week the new device was given a licence for use on European patients.

In a 12-week trial in the Netherlands, patients fitted with the EndoBarrier lost an average of 16kg compared with a control group of patients who dieted and lost just 5kg.

According to its developers, the treatment, which costs £2,000, is about half the cost of the cheapest obesity operation.

“The patients who used it have continued to lose weight. It gave them the incentive to diet and eat sensibly,” said Gersin.

The EndoBarrier device is fitted to the first two feet of the small intestine where most food is absorbed.

During trials the sleeve was able to reverse Type 2 diabetes within weeks by reducing patients’ blood sugar levels so they no longer needed to take drugs. Nadey Hakim, a leading UK consultant in weight loss surgery, said: “I would love to be able to cure a patient’s obesity with a 15-minute procedure. It’s a very clever idea”.

The EndoBarrier digestive tract liner won CE Mark approval in December, 2009, clearing the way for sales to begin in the European Union this year.

Source : India Times

How does EndoBarrier work ?

The concept of metabolic control is to control the body’s natural metabolism — to “reengineer” metabolic pathways within the body to achieve a desired response.

The EndoBarrier™ Gastrointestinal Liner offers metabolic control by influencing how food moves through the digestive system, similar to the effect of gastric bypass surgery. However, the EndoBarrier Gastrointestinal Liner is a nonsurgical approach, which makes it unique among other highly effective obesity interventions.

Eighty-four percent of patients immediately resolve their type 2 diabetes with gastric bypass surgery, a phenomenon found to occur as a primary, specific, and direct effect of this surgery — not secondary to the weight loss. The same metabolic control of type 2 diabetes documented after gastric bypass surgery may be realized with the EndoBarrier Gastrointestinal Liner.

The EndoBarrier Gastrointestinal Liner is a noninvasive, nonsurgical approach that may provide benefits similar to those achieved with invasive surgical procedures.

To know more about Endobarrier? Go to gidynamics.com

A new study by scientists at Temple University in Philadelphia has shown that the DNA of babies conceived through IVF differs from that of other kids, putting them at higher risk of diseases such as diabetes and obesity later in life.

According to researchers, their study could explain why IVF babies tend to be at higher risk of low birth weight, defects and rare metabolic disorders.

The changes are not in the genes themselves but in the mechanism that switches them on and off, the study of which is known as epigenetics.

“These epigenetic differences have the potential to affect embyronic development and foetal growth, as well as influencing long-term patterns of gene expression associated with increased risk of many human diseases,” Times Online quoted Professor Carmen Sapienza, a geneticist at Temple University in Philadelphia, who jointly led the research, as saying.

There is a possibility that such changes could be transmitted to the children of IVF babies, meaning they could spread through the human gene pool.

For the study, Sapienza and his colleagues took blood samples from the placenta and umbilical cords of 10 IVF children and 13 children who were naturally conceived.

They studied the DNA of cells taken from the blood to see if there were differences in the level of methylation.

This is the process by which molecules known as methyl groups are attached to genes to shut them down when they are not needed.

The results showed that the level of methylation in the cells taken from IVF babies was significantly lower – implying that some genes were becoming active at the wrong times.

“We have shown that in vitro conception is associated with differences in gene methylation and that some of these differences may affect gene expression,” said Sapienza.

According to the researchers, the findings could have serious implications for the booming industry in assisted reproduction.

The study has been published in the Human Molecular Genetics journal.

Source : Deccan Chronicle

27 Disember, 2009 13:44 PM

KUALA LUMPUR, 27 Dis (Bernama) — Mulai Jumaat ini harga minimum rokok ditetapkan RM6.40 bagi 20 batang apabila Kementerian Kesihatan menguatkuasakan Peraturan Harga Minimum Rokok dan Larangan Promosi Harga menerusi Peraturan-Peraturan Kawalan Hasil Tembakau(Pindaan)(No.2) 2009 yang diwartakan.

Menteri Kesihatan Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai berkata dengan penguatkuasaan peraturan itu kesemua rokok yang dijual dalam negara hendaklah dijual dengan harga yang tidak kurang daripada harga minimum yang ditetapkan, dikira pada harga RM0.32 sen bagi setiap batang rokok.

“Ini menjadikan harga minimum bagi paket yang mengandungi 20 batang rokok ialah RM6.40, 21 batang rokok (RM6.70), 22 batang rokok (RM7.05), 23 batang rokok (RM7.35), 24 batang rokok (RM7.70) dan RM8 bagi paket yang mengandungi 25 batang rokok,” katanya dalam satu kenyataan di sini pada Ahad.

Beliau berkata mereka yang sabit kesalahan melanggar mana-mana peruntukan di bawah peraturan itu boleh didenda sehingga RM10,000 atau penjara dua tahun atau kedua-duanya sekali.

Liow berkata dengan berkuatkuasanya peraturan itu juga semua syarikat rokok dikehendaki mengisytiharkan senarai harga jualan runcit produk keluaran mereka kepada kementerian sebelum 15 Januari ini.

Katanya semua rokok di pasaran tempatan hendaklah dijual pada harga tidak kurang daripada harga minimum rokok dan notis harga minimum itu hendaklah dipamerkan secara jelas di kaunter jualan tanpa logo, jenama, tanda niaga atau deskripsi berkaitan rokok yang dijual.

Liow juga berkata penjualan rokok pada harga yang lebih rendah adalah dilarang bagaimanapun syarikat rokok dibenarkan membuat pelarasan harga hanya sebanyak tiga kali setahun dan perbezaan harga tidak boleh melebihi 5 peratus.

Menurutnya peraturan itu juga melarang penjualan rokok yang mempunyai label “diskaun, harga istimewa, tawaran istimewa, promosi, promo, edisi terhad dan tawaran” atau apa-apa perkataan lain yang membawa erti diskaun atau jualan murah berbanding harga jualan runcit pada bungkusan atau label rokok atau tempat jualan rokok tersebut.

Liow berkata tujuan peraturan itu dikuatkuasakan adalah untuk mengurangkan kebolehcapaian dan kemampuan membeli rokok terutamanya oleh kanak-kanak, remaja dan golongan berpendapatan rendah selain membendung aktiviti promosi rokok melalui pemberian diskaun yang berlebihan.

“Demi menjaga kepentingan kanak-kanak dan remaja dari terjebak dengan ketagihan rokok dan seterusnya kemungkinan risiko menyalahgunaan dadah dan penularan penyakit-penyakit kronik, kerajaan komited untuk mengambil pendekatan mengurangkan kebolehcapaian dan kemampuan membeli rokok oleh golongan ini,” katanya.

Liow berkata banyak kajian sama ada dari dalam mahupun luar negara membuktikan bahawa peningkatan cukai dan harga rokok mampu mengurangkan kadar merokok dalam masyarakat terutamanya di kalangan kanak-kanak, remaja dan golongan berpendapatan rendah.

“Hasil kajian yang dibuat pada 2004 di Malaysia menunjukkan bahawa dengan peningkatan harga rokok sebanyak 10 peratus, ia akan dapat mengurangkan penggunaan terhadap rokok 3.8 peratus,” katanya.

– BERNAMA

Washington: In a significant breakthrough that can help prevent hypertension, a new study has found that a protein aids nerve sensors in blood vessels to keep blood pressure (BP) under control.

Without the protein channel, known as ASIC2, the sensors are unable to send the brain the signals it needs to properly control BP.

The finding, based on animal models, is important because it could be used to create new treatments to prevent high BP or hypertension.

“Sensors in your body’s blood vessels sense when your blood pressure goes up, for instance, when you get mad at someone,” said principal study investigator Frank Abboud, professor of internal medicine and biophysics, University of Iowa.

“These built-in sensors perceive the change and trigger a nearly instantaneous adjustment by sending signals to the brain, which in turn tells the blood vessels how to adjust,” he said, according to a university statement.

“By knowing more about what makes these sensors — known as baroreceptors — malfunction, we may be able to find ways to make them work properly and prevent high blood pressure,” added Abboud.

The study appeared in Neuron.

Source : Zeenews

8 December 2009, DUBAI — Debunking claims about diabetes being a life-long disease, a naturopath expert has said that genes that cause the illness can be reversed through correct eating and physical exercise.

“It is a false belief that the degenerating disease, diabetes, has to be managed forever,” said Dr Matina Chronopoulou, a naturopath doctor from Hellas Organics in Greece.

“New science shows that diabetes is reversible through an aggressive lifestyle, nutrition and occasional medication,” she said.

She was delivering a lecture on “Reversing type II diabetes and insulin: The naturopathic approach” at a seminar held alongside the Natural and Organics Products Exhibition 2009 currently under way at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre.

“Rye bread and pasta are two ingredients that have proven effects in reversing the genes that cause diabetes,” said the expert who has been practising nutritional and natural medicine for 30 years.

Dr Matina said our bodies are adapted to a nutrient-dense diet, which if altered can turn-on diabetes-causing genes. “A human diet should ideally consist of low sugar, high fibre and Omega-3 fats but when we eat out of harmony with our genes, we turn on other genes that promote diabetes,” she explained.

The health expert said 80 percent of diabetes, brought on by obesity, was preventable by improving diet and physical activity. “We are overeating. Our genes are not programmed to receive the amount of food we are now eating.

“Our ancestors ate at least 100 grams of fibre each day while the modern diet has up to 5 grams only.”

A diet high in fibre content, rich in colourful fruits and vegetables as well as low in sugar was the key to reversing the disease. But how the food you put on your plate can reduce and balance your blood sugar? “It is important to eat a diet that balances your blood sugar and improve your liver detoxification process and reduce inflammation,” she said.

Eating sources of meat that are organic and having meals 2-3 hours before bedtime are also instrumental in reducing the occurrence of the disease.

If the diet is adapted locally, 19.5 per cent of the affected population can reap immense health benefits, she added.

Source : Khaleej Times