Do you use public transportation to get around your city or town?  If you do, a new study suggests that the extra bit of walking to and from your rail or bus stop will help you lose weight. 

John M. MacDonald, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who studied the effects of a new light-rail line in Charlotte, N.C says that using the subway or bus increased the physical activity, and therefore the body-mass index, of people who started using it.The New York Times reported that those Charlotte residents surveyed who began to walk to the light rail instead of driving to work walked on average 1.2 miles total on their commutes to and from work.  The average weight reduction found was 1.18 B.M.I. point.

If you commute by public transportation, you can increase your daily physical activity by getting off a stop earlier.  Everyone else can incorporate more exercise into their daily routine by using the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator, walking or biking short distances instead of using the car, or parking far away from the entrance of a store where you are shopping.

What are other ways to incorporate more movement into your life?

Many children in our country start off Saturday morning with their favorite cartoon or television show. This is prime time for advertisers to sell the latest trend in children’s toys and foods. The problem is that the latest trend in food is generally an alarmingly unhealthy choice for children. A debate has sparked between the food industry and the federal government about what qualifies as an appropriate and healthy food to advertise to children. According to a recent New York Times article, the food industry began an initiative in 2007, to fight childhood obesity, and are trying to advertise and sell healthier choices for kids.

Unfortunately, the food industry has an odd conception of what is healthy for a child to eat and what is not; Froot Loops with 12 grams of sugar per serving are deemed healthy by their standard. While that amount of sugar is clearly a less than healthy choice for kids, the battle between the food industry giants and the federal government will continue to rage on. 

Although it is tough to fight such a big industry on a topic like this, we can all take our own steps to raise happy and healthy children.

Since sugar-filled breakfast foods are one of the largest culprits of target advertising, we came up with a few healthier options to feed your children first thing in the morning:

• Avocado on an Ezekiel muffin or whole grain toast sprinkled with sea salt and extra virgin olive oil
• Raw muesli with fresh berries
• Oatmeal with organic raisins and a touch of maple syrup
• Baked apples or pears sprinkled with oats and/or chopped nuts drizzled with honey or maple syrup
• Fresh fruit smoothies
• Almond butter and banana sandwiches on whole grain toast
• Breakfast egg sandwich with a whole grain muffin, turkey bacon and organic cheese
• Red quinoa with berries and/or bananas, warm milk and honey or maple syrup

What do you serve for your kids in the morning?

In a disposable society, we tend to place value on convenience, quick fixes, and fast food.  Yes, fast food is popular because it’s cheap, quick, and can be thrown away.  We toss the wrapping, cutlery, containers and leftover food as easily as we cruise through the drive-in.  The U.S. also has a bad habit of excessive waste as a result of overproducing mass quantities of food. 

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) says, in a new study, that 40 percent of what farmers grow ends up in the garbage.  This article states, “The food we toss consumes 4 percent of all U.S. oil and more than 25 percent of our fresh water. Food rotting in landfills produces methane, a potent climate-changing gas. Not to mention the energy spent first delivering, then hauling away uneaten food.” 

Not only is this overproduction of food in the U.S. bad for our planet, it’s also bad for our health. 

From this complex study, NIH scientists came up with their "push" hypothesis; “excess food pushes its way onto plates, the little bit more that people eat makes them overweight, and the rest goes in the trash or gets wasted along the way”.  The overproduction of food thereby becomes a contributing factor to the obesity epidemic. 

With agricultural subsidy programs that reward overproduction, and a food industry that is profit driven, producing a lot of cheap, high-calorie food items; change needs to come from the source.  What if government subsidies were given to small organic farmers instead of Big Ag and there were more regulations on how the food industry can market their products?  Do you think we would see a shift in this complex issue of food waste and the "push" hypothesis?

How would you change the production model?  What is your solution to the high cost of cheap food?

According to a study reported on by the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, if you are consuming the foods television advertisements encourage, your health may suffer the consequences.  Marketers are promoting foods that are processed with added sugar, salt, cholesterol, and saturated fat.  The study suggests that these food advertisements are contributors to the obesogenic environment that is related to chronic disease.

The New York Times quoted Michael Mink, the lead author of the study, stating “Just one advertised food item by itself will provide, on average, three times your daily recommended servings of sugar and two and half times your daily recommended servings of fat.  That means one food item could give you three days’ worth of sugar.”

If society is influenced by what the television advertises to them, perhaps this is a wakeup call to better regulate the industry that has the potential to impact our health in such an alarming way.  Where are the local farmer’s market commercials? Or the advertisements promoting organic foods? 

Is it time to cut the cable or change the channel?  What solutions do you propose to this commercial dilemma?

 It’s no secret that if you eat a diet that is packed full of fresh fruits and vegetables and avoid processed foods, your health may improve.  That is unless those fruits and veggies are conventionally grown using pesticides which keep the bugs and weeds away, but also leave harmful chemicals that end up in our bodies. 

A new report by the Environmental Working Group and highlighted by Sanjay Gupta, MD on CNN, gives insight into the debate on whether eating organic is really better for you.   The reports states that if you are eating conventional celery, you may be ingesting up to 67 pesticides with it.  These chemicals are designed to kill things.  Do we really want to save the few cents that buying conventionally grown produce offers us? 

There are many ways to save money and your health.  Try shopping at the local farmers market.  You can buy fresh off the farm produce, cultivate relationships with the farmers and have a discussion about their growing practices.  If you live in an area that allows, you can also grow some of your own food.  Finally, with knowledge of the harmful effects of toxic chemicals in our environment, finding ways to avoid non-organic food is of vital importance. 

Are you spending the extra money for organic foods?  What are your suggestions for saving money on an organic diet?

How would you like fresh organic produce as a perk at your office?  Would you spend your break weeding and harvesting a garden so that you could enjoy the delicious bounty during an afternoon meeting or even bring it home for dinner?  Many big corporations are trending toward offering an organic garden to employees.  In the face of a bad economy, companies have less to spend on raises so they are giving away the green in other ways.  A recent New York Times article concludes, “these corporate plots of dirt spring from growing attention to sustainability and a rising interest in gardening. But they also reflect an economy that calls for creative ways to build workers’ morale and health.”

Talk to any gardener and you will find that it is a great way to de-stress.  Many people find tending a garden very relaxing and they experience a great deal of accomplishment when they harvest their crops.  Not only do workers have a great way to spend their break, they are saving money, bonding with co-workers and promoting good health by eating fresh organic produce they had a hand in growing. 

There should be a garden at every office, school, church and hospital.  Can you imagine the impact that would make on the lives of Americans?

What are some of the things your company is doing to build a more sustainable place of work?

We know there are certain behaviors that will reduce our life span. Our bad habits affect our health in many ways. Smoking, excessive drinking, eating unhealthy processed foods, and sedentary lifestyles all take their toll.  New research states that when all four of these bad habits come together they can prematurely age someone by 12 years!

Integrative Nutrition guest speaker Dr. Walter Willett, the chair of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, was quoted by Time magazine saying, "conclusions are profoundly important and worth replicating: healthy lifestyle practices that are modest and simple—specifically, not smoking, getting regular physical activity, eating a good diet and avoiding excessive alcohol consumption—can profoundly affect our chances of living to an old age."

Whether you have one or all four of these bad habits, you can make simple lifestyle changes now that will impact your health immediately and increase your chances of living longer.  One of the unique dietary theories Integrative Nutrition teaches is crowding out.  Instead of avoiding or removing certain foods (or bad habits) from your life, you are encouraged to add in a healthy alternative.  The body can only take so much food.  If you fill your body with healthy, nutrient-dense foods, it is only natural that cravings for unhealthy foods will lessen substantially. 

Crowding out not only works with unhealthy foods; it works with unhealthy relationships when we surround our self with nourishing friends and with exercise. How has crowding out improved your health and your life?

If you are a parent, or someone who loves kids, try a little experiment.  Sit down with a young one and count how many food advertisements there are during one television show they watch.  Of those advertisements, how many are for sugary cereals, drinks, or snacks?  Do you see the connection between Tony the Tiger, Sponge Bob, Shrek or any other funny face selling to our kids and their growing waistlines? 

A recent NY Times article “Risks for Youths Who Eat What They Watch” reported on several studies.  One group found that of “8,854 food ads reviewed in the study, there were no ads for fruits or vegetables targeted at children or teens.”  Is that surprising?  Food manufacturers are in it for the money.  If you put a cartoon character on a box of cereal, the child will want that cereal.  These studies also found that “for each additional hour of television viewing, the children consumed an additional 167 calories, especially the calorie-dense, low-nutrient foods frequently advertised on television.”

How do we get them to ask for good nutritious food?  We educate them on the importance of good health.  School yard gardens, healthy school lunches, and nutrition detectives, are great places to start. 

What can you do in your community to educate parents and children on the importance of good health?

Did you know that eating junk food can change the chemistry in your brain?  A recent article on CNN.com reports on scientific findings that junk food is addictive.  Addiction comes in many forms, and food addiction is nothing new.  The article states “high-calorie foods affect the brain in much the same way as cocaine and heroin. When rats consume these foods in great enough quantities, it leads to compulsive eating habits that resemble drug addiction”.   Food is made more addictive when it is stripped of its nutrients, and we end up eating bad food not because we’re hungry but because we think we need it.

Morgan Spurlock demonstrated fast food addiction in his documentary film, Super Size Me.  During his 30 day fast food binge, Morgan began to experience the addicting effects of subsisting on an all fast food diet; in particular, he craved his daily fix of fast food at every meal and felt ill when he did not get it. 

Just like drug addiction, this study explains that when eating too much junk food, we overload the “pleasure sensors” in the brain.  The junk food makes us feel good for a short time, but once the pleasure sensors crash, we need more and more of the food to feel that sugar “high” again.  Imagine your body needing a certain amount of junk food just to function normally?

It’s not surprising that processed, chemicalized foods alter brain chemistry.  What’s surprising is that fast food is still the number one choice for many people.  How do we help people overcome fast food addiction?  Awareness is the first step.  People need to be informed of the harmful effects of fast food.  Transitioning to a diet of whole foods is the key to helping a junk food junkie overcome the addiction. 

Can we program ourselves to become ‘addicted’ to healthy, nutritious foods instead of high-calorie, processed, junk foods?

Obesity is a multi-layered health issue in America.  Many health advocates are calling out sodas, fast food, lifestyle and genetics as culprits on the list of those to blame for the crisis.  Now there is a new name to add to the list of usual suspects in the fight against weight gain: obesogens.

Researchers have targeted obesogens which are chemicals that disrupt the function of hormonal systems.  An article from MSNBC details how they “enter our bodies from a variety of sources — natural hormones found in soy products, hormones administered to animals, plastics in some food and drink packaging, ingredients added to processed foods, and pesticides sprayed on produce.  They act in a variety of ways: by mimicking human hormones such as estrogen, by misprogramming stem cells to become fat cells and, researchers think, by altering the function of genes.”

This research gives us more evidence and reason to advocate for organically grown whole foods.  As the article suggests, you can enjoy the foods you love, just make sure they are from natural sources free of antibiotics and chemicals.

Do you think that burgers and fries should remain off the list of foods for someone trying to lose weight even if they are of the all natural variety?