Forums: Nutrition

I am a medical sociologist, which means I study the health of whole societies. I've spent more than 20 years studying the best possible ways to address alcohol problems in societies -- what works and what doesn't to protect people from harm. I work as a professor in the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine and at the UCSF Clinical and Translational Science Institute. This allows me to connect with other scientists who come from very different backgrounds but who want to work together on big problems -- think of a Manhattan Project, only one focused on protecting...

First lady Michelle Obama on Wednesday unveiled tougher nutrition standards that school meals will have to meet starting this year. The new standards were required by the 2010 school nutrition bill that increased funding for school meals. The new regulations, according to the Department of Agriculture, will: Ensure that students are offered both fruits and vegetables every day of the week; Substantially increase offerings of whole grain-rich foods; Offer only fat-free or low-fat milk varieties; Limit calories based on the age of children being served to ensure proper portion size; and Increase the focus on reducing the amounts of saturated...

WASHINGTON — A slice of pizza still counts as a vegetable. In a victory for the makers of frozen pizzas, tomato paste and French fries, Congress on Monday blocked rules proposed by the Agriculture Department that would have overhauled the nation’s school lunch program. The proposed changes — the first in 15 years to the $11 billion school lunch program — were meant to reduce childhood obesity by adding more fruits and green vegetables to lunch menus, Agriculture Department officials said. The rules, proposed last January, would have cut the amount of potatoes served and would have changed the way...

Cutting back on salt may not be as beneficial for your heart as once thought, a new study suggests. While a diet low in salt reduces blood pressure, it increases the levels of cholesterol, fat and hormones in the blood that are known to increase the risk of heart disease, the study found. Overall, the good and bad consequences of a low-salt diet may cancel each other out, so the diet has relatively little effect on the development of disease, said study researcher Dr. Niels Graudal, of Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - First lady Michelle Obama led toddlers at a New Orleans daycare center in calisthenics and read them a book about a mouse that eats green peas, bidding to get America's children eating better and exercising more. Obama stretched, jumped and marched in place before reading to the children who gathered in a classroom with their parents and teachers at the Royal Castle Child Development Center. The center focuses on preschoolers from families with moderate and low incomes.