Results tagged “nutrition programs” from Weight Loss & Nutrition News

WASHINGTON - As more Americans struggle with growing waistlines, U.S. health officials Wednesday set out their own tips for drugmakers seeking to develop products for people trying to shed pounds.

The Food and Drug Administration’s draft guidelines — more than 10 years in the making — aim to help companies develop and test new drugs and devices for treating obesity.

About a third of U.S. adults, or more than 60 million people, are obese and another third are overweight, government statistics show. Nearly a fifth of U.S. children weigh too much.

Califorina - In a research report released today on the state of students in California's public schools, children's fitness level was targeted as the system's biggest failure.

In the "2006-07 California Report Card: The State of the State's Children," the Oakland-based nonprofit Children Now gave low marks for the state's ability to keep children within healthy weight limits. While after-school programs merited a B+ grade, children's obesity earned a dismal D+ mark. Currently one in three children between the ages of 6 and 17 is obese or overweight, according to the report's analysis.

"It's hard to look at that statistic and say anything other than, 'We've got a crisis on our hands,'" said former state Assemblyman Ted Lempert, now the president of Children Now. He said the grade was actually an improvement over last year's D assessment.

WASHINGTON, DC - The U.S. Government, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced a $46 million award to the nonprofit (PATH) to improve nutrition of infants and young children in developing nations by promoting breastfeeding, complementary feeding practices and maternal nutrition.

For millions of children, damage from hunger and malnutrition can cause death or disabilities that last a lifetime. Almost all nutritional deficiencies impair immune function and other host defenses leading to a cycle of longer-lasting and more severe infections and ever-worsening nutritional status. The period from birth to two years of age is particularly important because of the rapid growth and brain development that occurs during this time. In developing nations, the period is often marked poor nutrition that leads to impeded growth, micronutrient deficiencies, and common childhood illnesses such as diarrhea, as children transition from breastfeeding to solid foods.

Weight loss has become extremely big business in the US, with a third of all Americans now indicating that they are on a diet.

The Calorie Control Council has found that there are now more dieters in the US than at any other time in the last 15 years and it seems certain that many more will join the list after the inevitable over-indulgence of Christmas. While the research has focused exclusively on the US, its findings appear to be equally relevant to the UK and throughout Europe.

Robin Steagall, the council's nutrition communications manager, has advised prospective dieters that they need to keep a close eye on the calories they are consuming and the calories they are expending.

India plans to introduce yoga in schools to fight rising obesity among middle-class youngsters, even as the country continues to battle widespread malnutrition and "shameful" infant and maternal mortality.

Health minister Anbumani Ramadoss said the country faced a "galloping" rise in heart disease, diabetes and cancer as India's 300-million-strong and increasingly wealthy middle class ate more junk food and lived more sedentary lives.

At the other end of the spectrum, the country had some of the worst infant and maternal mortality rates in the world, he told medical experts at a workshop.

The European Commission published in November an extensive survey on EU citizens’ views regarding obesity and health. According to this survey, a majority of European consumers believes that healthy eating includes a balanced and varied diet rich in fruit and vegetables.

Main findings of the study are:

• one in five Europeans has changed what he or she eats within the last year
• 31 percent of respondents consider that is not easy to eat a healthy diet
• 58 percent of EO consumers find indeed that eating a healthy diet involves above all “eating more fruit and vegetables”
• 45 percent thinks that eating too much fat food is incompatible with healthy eating.
• the most frequently mentioned change is eating more fruit and vegetables 155 percent).
• a very clear majority of Europeans (85%) is in favour of Government action to promote a healthy diet.

source - Freshfel Europe

Recently declared a separate entity from parent Loders Croklaan and with a new CEO at the helm, the Lipid Nutrition is aiming to grow sales volumes by making its products attractive for food uses and to extend geographically.

Katinka Abbenbroek became CEO of Lipid Nutrition on December 1 on the retirement of Aat Visser, who held the post for seven years. Visser worked for Unilever – which sold Lipid Nutrition in 2002 – and Loders Croklaan for 42 years in total.

Abbenbroek told NutraIngredients.com that when she started with the company eight years ago, it was a relatively small outfit. Now it has a staff of 75 (excluding production), who have brought on board considerable expertise in R&D, regulatory, patents and marketing.

Funny. A press-release claiming that Nestle is working on customers' well-being and proper awareness. At the same time Nestle's Enviga appears to be a fraud. Read about growing profits of Nestle below.

NESTLE Nutrition, a division of Nestle Malaysia, expects its healthcare nutrition business to continue a double-digit growth this year, driven by greater awareness on health and well-being in Malaysia.

Nestle Nutrition business manager for healthcare & performance nutrition, Emilyn Loo, said healthcare nutrition registered between 30 and 40 per cent growth in sales over the past six years.

NEW YORK - From the corner pizzeria to high-end bakeries, New York City’s world famous eateries are preparing for kitchen scrutiny as the board of health moves Tuesday to ban trans fats.

The board was poised on Tuesday to make New York the nation’s first city to outlaw the unhealthy oils, though it’s expected to give restaurants a slight break by relaxing what had been considered a tight deadline for compliance.

The restaurant industry argued that it was unrealistic to give eateries six months to replace cooking oils and shortening and 18 months to phase out the ingredients altogether.

Glanbia is stepping up its presence in Asia Pacific with the establishment of its first nutritionals facility in the region, which is likely to expand it company’s activities from infant formula into vitamin and mineral premixes.

The Irish dairy firm opened an office in Shanghai eighteen months ago, and its main activity has been the supply of lactose for infant formulas.

The facility, to be located in Suzhou, just outside Shanghai, is expected to be completed in 2008. Spokesperson Geraldine Kearney told NutraIngredients.com that the company is not yet discussing its function in detail, but that it is likely to offer similar vitamin and mineral premix solutions to existing facilities in Germany and California.

For many, grocery shopping today is more about hunting for bargains; it's about finding the healthiest offerings on the shelves.

Labels play a big part in helping shoppers separate the healthy choices from the junk. But with dozens of apparent ratings systems out there -- from Kraft's "Sensible Solution" accolade to the American Heart Association's "Heart-Check" endorsement, consumers may be left wondering how much weight these approvals carry.

Now, the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is petitioning the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to design a national set of symbols to help consumers quickly identify healthier foods.

The following are working descriptions of the eight components of a coordinated school health program.

Health Education: A planned, sequential, K-12 curriculum that addresses the physical, mental, emotional and social dimensions of health. The curriculum is designed to motivate and assist students to maintain and improve their health, prevent disease, and reduce health-related risk behaviors. It allows students to develop and demonstrate increasingly sophisticated health-related knowledge, attitudes, skills, and practices. The comprehensive health education curriculum includes a variety of topics such as personal health, family health, community health, consumer health, environmental health, sexuality education, mental and emotional health, injury prevention and safety, nutrition, prevention and control of disease, and substance use and abuse. Qualified, trained teachers provide health education.

Dieting in the future will be "weight loss to go," with more people getting customized advice on their cell phones, personal digital assistants and computers and more companies delivering diet foods directly to homes.

So says Thomas Wadden, one of the nation's top obesity researchers and president of the Obesity Society.

Currently, 66 percent of U.S. adults are overweight or obese (30 or more pounds over a healthy weight), which increases the risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer and other medical issues.

Research suggests that dieters benefit from getting nutritionists' advice via e-mails, chat rooms and phone calls, says Wadden, 54, a psychologist and director of the Center for Weight and Eating Disorders at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia.

JAPAN - The government approved at a Cabinet meeting Friday the country's first white paper on food education, which emphasizes the importance of proper nutrition and warns that healthy dietary habits, such as regular, well-balanced meals and families having sit-down meals together, are disappearing.

In a government survey conducted in 2004, just 25.9 percent of families said they ate dinner together every day, down from 36.5 percent in 1976, due to the growing tendency to eat out and the diversification of lifestyles, the white paper says.

A similar survey taken in 2000 found that almost one in five children in the fifth grade of primary school did not eat or rarely ate breakfast, while the figure for second-year middle students was 25.1 percent.

UK and Dutch food agencies are set to put their heads together over how government and private sector can work together to address diet and nutritional issues.

The Dutch Food and Consumer Product Authority, with funding from the UK's Food Standards Agency, is organising a seminar in The Netherlands on November 30, which will draw comparisons between the two countries' approaches.

Collaboration over food and nutritional policy between European countries is particularly pertinent at the present time, with several key piece of EU legislation set to come into force in the near future – such as the nutrition and health claims and food fortification regulations.

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AFX) - Nestle AG announced a five-year research agreement between the Nestle Research Center (NRC) and the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology EPFL, aiming to investigate the relationship between nutrition and the brain.

Under the agreement, Nestle will contribute 5 mln sfr per year to research at EPFL's Brain Mind Institute, where two Nestle Chairs will be established. The research will extend from studying the role nutrition plays in children's brain development to identifying ways of slowing down brain decline in older age and preventing diseases such as Alzheimer's, the food company said.

The agreement will also include research into taste perception and flavour enhancement, it added.

source AFX News 

Type 1 diabetes is a growing health problem among European children. European data indicate that the disease incidence has increased five- to six-fold among children under the age of 15 years after World War II, and there are no signs that the increase in incidence is levelling off.

The most conspicuous increase has been seen among children under the age of 5 years. The EU-funded Diabetes Prevention study is generating a wealth of information on breast-feeding practices, infant nutrition and growth in young children in various countries. Newborn infants observed in Northern Europe (NE) had a higher birth weight but a shorter birth length than infants in Central and Southern Europe (CSE).

A must-read article. 

UK - After 50 years of conflicting evidence and advice, the fats in our food have been tried and sentenced. But have the real killers been identified — or are they still wrecking lives? Investigation by Richard Girling.

Food scares. Don’t they bring you out in sores? Proselytising zealots on the one hand try to tell us that “natural” is best, and on the other hand that, well, it’s only best if you skim off the fatty bits that actually make it taste of something. The penalty for noncompliance with dietary high command used to be rickets. Now it’s bad skin, obesity, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, depression, diabetes and cancer.

by Dr Tee E Siong

MALAYSIA - Public health nutrition programmes probably started in our country in a big way in the 1960s, and in Europe and US more than six decades ago.  

It is thus probably a little surprising that the First World Congress on Public Health Nutrition was only held recently in Barcelona, Spain. Organised by the Spanish Society of Community Nutrition, the congress was supported by the International Union of Nutritional Sciences.  

I found the scientific programme interesting and most of the talks rather educational. As many of the issues discussed are of direct relevance to the nutrition scene in Malaysia, I would like to highlight some of these issues to the nutrition community here, both in the public and private sectors, as well as the public at large. 

Spurred by rising childhood obesity rates, state Senate President Pro Tempore Donald Williams, D-Brooklyn, pushed to get a stricter school nutrition laws on the books.

Williams succeeded, but the law is getting some unhappy reviews from educators.
    
Not all local education officials think state lawmakers should control what children eat. Some school officials are crafting more moderate policies for their schools.

"I don't think we should be regulating as hard how children eat," Norwich Board of Education Chairman Charles Jaskiewicz said. "If the government wants to attack the problem of physical obesity, it's got to start at home and not at school, because what's to stop kids from eating a pack of Yodels or drinking soda at home?"