Posts Tagged ‘food’

A new study released this week of over 30 thousand US children found that, on average, kids snack three times a day. What’s more, over half of these children snack 4 times a day. Compared with data from the 1970s which show children consuming over 400 daily calories from snacks, kids today consume nearly 600 daily calories from snack food alone. “My underlying fear is that we’re moving away from being hungry and eating for satiation to just eating,” said Dr. Barry M. Popkin, co-author of the study and director of nutrition epidemiology at the University of North Carolina. Although caloric intake from snacks have increased over time, the average child’s total daily calories have only increased by 113 calories. This means that snack calories have replaced mealtime calories, which is not a good thing since sweet snacks (cookies and cakes) and salty snacks (chips and pretzels) are the top two most consumed categories of snack. [via New York Times]

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Researchers from Tufts University are concerned that some nutritional labels may be underestimating the caloric content of their respective products. After evaluating 29 commercially-prepared restaurant foods and 10 frozen meals which are found throughout US, researchers discovered that the sit-down restaurant foods averaged 18% more calories than stated and the frozen meals averaged 8% more calories than advertised. The authors note that the US Food and Drug Administration allows up to 20% excess energy content but weight must be no less than 99% of the stated value. This might lead manufacturers to add more food to insure compliance with the weight standards and thereby exceed the stated energy content. However, it’s the allowable 20% caloric excess that is appalling. As the researchers note – a positive energy balance of just 5% per day for an individual requiring 2,000 kcal/day could lead to a 10-lb weight gain in a single year. [via Science Daily]

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Yet another warning today regarding food contamination. The Minnesota Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health have issued an advisory warning after state laboratories detected Salmonella in a jar of King Nut brand creamy peanut butter. This particular peanut butter is distributed throughout the state to long-term care facilities, hospitals, schools, restaurants, delis, universities, cafeterias and bakeries. If you, or anyone you know, lives in the state of Minnesota be aware that investigations are ongoing and it is probably a good idea to avoid foods containing peanut butter if you don’t know what the source of the peanut butter is. Salmonella infections can commonly cause nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, fever, and diarrhea, which can be bloody. Read more about salmonella here.

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Milk allergy is the most common food allergy in children. And according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention food allergies in children have risen 18 percent in the last decade, with 3 million children in the United States having at least one food allergy. Having an allergy to milk can be difficult for children since milk products are extremely prevalent in the U.S. But scientists at Johns Hopkins and Duke universities are working on a solution. Their recent research suggest that daily exposure to milk powder can enhance the body’s tolerance to milk proteins. This technique, called oral immunotherapy, “gradually retrains the immune system to completely disregard or to better tolerate the allergens in milk that previously caused allergic reactions,” study senior investigator Dr. Robert Wood, director of Allergy and Immunology at Hopkins Children’s, said in a hospital news release. “Albeit preliminary and requiring further study, these results suggest that oral immunotherapy may be the closest thing yet to a true treatment for food allergy.”

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