That’s astounding. The price tag amounts to $147 billion a year in direct medical costs – that’s just over nine percent of all medical spending here in the U.S.

“Obesity, and with it diabetes, are the only major health problems that are getting worse in this country, and they are getting worse rapidly,” says Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

One in three adults are obese in the United States. Let’s put that in a language everyone speaks: money.

A new report, published in the online edition of Health Affairs lays out the financial burden. Here it is in individual terms:

“A normal-weight individual will spend about $3,400 per year in medical expenditures and that number rises to about $4,870 if that individual is obese,” says study author Eric Finkelstein, director, RTI Public Health Economics Program in Research Triangle Park, N.C.

The biggest expenditure for the obese is prescription drugs. A normal weight person will on average spend about $700 a year in prescription medications. However, someone who is obese will spend about $1,300 on average.

So what does it take to reverse the trend? It comes down to the argument of individuals taking responsibility for their diet vs. the idea that the problem is more in the food supply in our society.

“Reversing obesity is not going to be done successfully with individual effort,” says Dr. Frieden. “We did not get to this situation over the past three decades because of any change in our genetics or any change in our food preferences. We got to this stage of the epidemic because of a change in our environment and only a change in our environment again will allow us to get back to a healthier place,” he said.

Via Yahoo

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It’s Expensive Being Obese

Condiments are often a second thought in our meal preparations, that may be putting on extra pounds. Yes, but not necessarily in the way you would think.

New research is suggesting that if you just say no to the extras on your food, like ketchup, relish, etc., you can shed some weight. But not so much because of the extra calories, even though that would help too, it’s more about evidence that shows condiments make people consume more food.

In the study of college students, when they added things like ketchup to fries and whipped cream to brownies, they ate between 25-40 percent more of the item.

There’s another twist to the findings. It’s not that the toppings make people eat more because the food is tastier with condiments. It’s that it takes your palate longer to tire from the taste of the food, which in turn makes you eat more.

Should you be eating fries and brownies enough to make this much of an issue? Does this apply for healthier items like mustard or vinegar? Otherwise, condiments do tend to be for less-than-healthy foods.

In general, a solid tip is to use about a teaspoon of a condiment, and when possible, serve it on the side and dip your fork in before each bite. You’ll be surprised to see how much less you consume.

(via: Real Age)

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Study Condemns Condiments

A recent study examined how the number of times you chew your food relates to satisfying your hunger. What they found was intriguing. Forty chews was the magic number.

When people in the study ate a small serving of almonds, 40 chews satisfied hunger better than 10. And even when they looked at people taking 25 chews with almonds, it wasn’t as effective. On top of the benefit of feeling full, the magic number of 40 chews also made the subjects feel full longer than the lower counts.

You are better off chewing almonds or any nuts slowly anyway, because they are calorie dense. To avoid too many calories, consider some lower-calorie snack alternatives, particularly raw vegetables.

The biggest challenge I face with managing weight is feeling full while eating light healthy food. Realage.com gives 10 handy tips to resolve hunger, and satisfy your appetite while staying healthy, some of these include:

• Eat protein for breakfast
• Store tempting foods out of reach, forcing you to literally take extra steps to attain them
• Get 8 hours of sleep
• Ask the waiter to serve half your meal, and box the rest
• Sit down and use utensils when snacking, you’ll consume fewer calories
• Start lunch with a vegetable soup and you’ll reduce overall calories by 20% for that meal

(via: Real Age)

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Chew Food More, Lose Weight

There’s help on the way.

A group of health experts from Women’s Health magazine were asked to take on an exhaustive four-month mission going up and down supermarket aisles to examine as many prepackaged foods as they could, and then deduct which are the best choices.

And how exhaustive was the group’s research? Well, they picked a grand total of 125 packaged foods that they deem fit for consumption. The list comes with a handy color-coded guide indicating the health benefits derived from each food, including fighting cancer, muscle building, bone building, fighting heart disease and promoting weight loss. They’re also broken down into categories aligning with grocery aisles: drinks, cereals, pasta/rice, fruits/veggies, etc. You can see the whole list at MSN.com, but here we show you the top choice from each category.

Drinks — Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice with Calcium & Vitamin D. One 8 oz. glass has 110 calories. Fights cancer, heart disease and builds bones.

Bread and Cereal — Pepperidge Farm Whole Grain Double Fiber 100 percent Whole Wheat. One slice has 100 calories. Fights heart disease and promotes weight loss.

Pasta and Rice — Ronzoni Smart Taste Rotini. One 2 oz. serving has 180 calories. Promotes weight loss, fights heart disease, and builds muscles and bones.

Fruits and Vegetables — Del Monte Tropical Fruit Salad in Lightly Sweetened Fruit Juice. One cup has 80 calories. Promotes weight loss and fights cancer.

Frozen Foods — Lean Cuisine Grilled Chicken Primavera. One package has 220 calories. Promotes weight loss.

Frozen Treats — Klondike Slim-a-Bear 100-Calorie Sandwiches. One sandwich has just 100 calories. Promotes weight loss.

Soup — Campbell’s V8 Garden Broccoli Soup. One cup has 80 calories. Promotes weight loss and fights cancer.

Snacks — Lara Bar. One apple pie bar has 180 calories. Fights cancer and heart disease.

Meat and Fish — Coleman Organic Breaded and Fully Cooked Chicken Breast Strips. A two-strip serving has 130 calories. Promotes weight loss and builds muscle.

Sweets — Kashi Oatmeal Dark Chocolate Cookies. One cookie has 130 calories. Fights heart disease.

Dairy —  Reddi-Wip Original Whipped Light Cream. A one tablespoon serving has 15 calories. Promotes weight loss.

Condiments — Hellmann’s Mayonnaise with Extra Virgin Olive Oil. One tablespoon has 60 calories. Promotes weight loss and fights heart disease.

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125 Packaged Foods That Won’t Wreck Your Diet

Great Depression Cooking with Clara

In these uncertain financial times, it’s always good to be aware of how much you’re spending on food. If you’re looking for frugal cooking tips, go no further than this spunky 93-year-old cook named Clara. If anyone knows what it’s like to survive in tough times, it would be someone who lived through the Great Depression. She turned that experience into valuable inspiration for the rest of us.

It’s those experiences that were the inspiration for her Great Depression Cooking with Clara DVD. It’s a collection of her popular YouTube cooking shows, plus extra features you can’t find anywhere else.

Here’s a sample from the series: her recipe for pasta with peas. You’ll be amazed at how lucid she is, and enjoy her storytelling from nearly a century on this planet. As it says on her website, “The magic of Clara is that she can turn lemons into lemonade and potatoes into just about everything else.”

She’s had an interesting life. Clara quit school her sophomore year to work in a factory, worked for Hostess filling Twinkies in the ’30s, and married an opera singer in Rome in the ’40s.

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Frugal Cooking Tips from Clara, a Great Depression Survivor

This doesn’t mean experts will recommend fatty foods. But it could lead to a new way to treat memory-related problems. Drugs that could mimic the action of the compound are in trials.

In addition, there’s evidence that shows high levels of oleoylethanolamide (OEA) can reduce appetite, produce weight loss, and lower blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels.

Dr. Daniele Piomelli and his team discovered that OEA also causes memories to be laid down by activating memory-enhancing signals in the amygdala – the part of the brain involved with memories of emotional events.

“Better understanding of how memories are formed could lead to new treatments that help the brain when it becomes affected by Alzheimer’s,” says Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust.

Dr. Daniele Piomelli says that there’s an evolutionary explanation for the memory-boosting OEA.

“By helping mammals remember where and when they have eaten a fatty meal, OEA’s memory-enhancing activity seems to have been an important evolutionary tool for early humans and other animals,” says Dr. Piomelli. “Remembering the location and context of a fatty meal was probably an important survival mechanism for early humans.”

“Clariyfing the role of OEA in human food consumption will add to our understanding of the development of the obesity epidemic,” says Professor Harald Hansen, of The Danish University of Pharmaceutical Sciences, in Copenhagen. “Such knowledge may possibly also help us develop drug candidates for treating morbid obesity.”

(via BBC)

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Fatty Foods Can Boost Memory

“We’ve found that the presence of a healthy item leads people to choose the one that is the least healthy on the menu,” says Fitzsimons. “Just seeing the healthy item and considering it makes you feel you’ve done your duty. It’s crazy, but it’s human.”

Participants in the study, who were shown to have strong will power, crumbled under the pressure. When they saw french fries on a menu with only unhealthy foods, they were fine. But if a salad was added to the mix, they lost their will and buckled under the pressure.

So what is the psychology behind this odd phenomenon? Fitzsimons says that the presence of a salad on the menu has a “liberating effect” that frees even disciplined people “to give in to temptation and make an unhealthy choice.”

(via: WebMD)

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When Healthy Food Makes You Eat Badly

Commercially prepared canned food has a long shelf life. But like all good things, they eventually come to an end. The ending date just depends on the kind of food you’re talking about. This is how it works, according to the Department of Agriculture:

High-acid foods - Tomatoes, fruit and fruit juice can be stored for up to 18 months.

Low-acid foods - Vegetables and meat can be stored for two to five years.

When you go to purchase your canned goods, it’s mostly about common sense. Make sure the products aren’t dented or tampered in any way. Store canned food in a cool, dry place. Avoid cabinets over the stove, under the sink, or in a damp basement or garage. The can is protective, but it’s not a super-human shield from spoiling agents.

(via: Mayo Clinic)

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Canned Goods Don’t Last Forever

But this isn’t a life sentence for those who inherit a variant version of the FTO gene. The “obesity gene” predisposes people to being fat, but it’s not an unchangeable fate.

“We know that genes affect our body weight set point. But so does our environment and our diet,” says child obesity expert David S. Ludwig, MD, PhD. “We can’t change our genes, but we can change our diet, and by doing so in a sophisticated way, we may be able to adjust that body weight set point in our favor.”

Researcher Laura Johnson, PhD and her colleagues concluded that kids can offset the risk of having the obesity gene if their parents give them fewer energy-dense foods. That means parents need to do what has been common knowledge for so long: feed your kids more fruits and vegetables, and less energy dense foods such as cheese and desserts.

Low-energy density foods fill you up with less calories, while high density foods give you a lot of calories while not filling you up.

(via: WebMD)

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Obesity Gene is Not a Death Sentence

Here are 13 food superstitions… if you’re into that sort of thing.

• The Chinese believe a single set of chopsticks lying across an empty rice bowl is a symbol of death.

• Americans believe snagging the long-end of a wishbone brings good luck.

• Greeks believe bread is a gift from God, and always mark a fresh loaf with a cross. They do not let bread go to waste, as it’s considered a sin.

• Greeks also believe garlic wards off evil, as does throwing salt over your left shoulder.

• Germans eat sauerkraut and Americans eat Black Eyed Peas on New Year’s Day for good health and fortune during the year.

• European farmers plant eggs in their fields to bring forth healthy grain harvests.

• Romanians believe eating the corners from bread will create a good relationship with your mother-in-law.

• Indians keep onions in their pocket to prevent heartstroke.

• Jews believe eating an egg with two yolks will bless you with bearing many children.

• Filipinos do not eat fish or chicken on New Year’s Eve because they believe it symbolizes food scarcity.

• The English believe it is bad luck to pick blackberries after October 11.

• Scottish fishermen do not say “salmon” while at sea as this will bring on a dismal catch.

• Spaniards believe a ham exposed to moonlight will go bad.

Post from: Diets in Review Blog

13 Food Superstitions