Category: Say Cheese, Carrots! Veggie Photos in Lunch Trays Boost Consumption

Ron Winslow
Simple photos of green beans in cafeteria trays spurred more kids to take them.
The simple act of putting photos of green beans and carrots in cafeteria-tray compartments sparked increased consumption among elementary-school students, according to a small study that suggests one more potential avenue for getting kids to eat their veggies.
A research […]

WSJ Staff
Roche’s Genomics Bet: Roche’s $6 billion hostile bid for DNA-sequencing company Illumina represents a bet that the technology will filter down from academic and government research centers to doctors’ offices and hospitals, the WSJ reports. Roche believes sales of genetic mapping machines will almost double to $2.1 billion by 2015, but some […]

MEwens
Bad Day For European Pharma: European drug makers AstraZeneca and Novartis reported setbacks yesterday, the WSJ reports. AstraZeneca said it would take a $380 million charge to stop development of experimental drugs for depression and ovarian cancer, which means 2011 profits are likely to come in at the low end of its previously […]

MEwens
During our daily subway commute to and from Health Blog HQ, we’ve noticed posters telling us exactly how far we’d have to walk to work off various sugar-sweetened drinks.
Now a study just published online by the American Journal of Public Health makes us think that the NYC Department of Public Health, which is […]

MEwens
McDonald’s and other fast-food restaurants have been the target of ordinances on kids’ meals and toy giveaways.
San Francisco’s move last year to put restrictions on fast-food meal packages that include free toys — and restaurants’ attempts to evade those restrictions — has gotten a lot of attention.
But Santa Clara County, also in California, […]

MEwens
It’s no secret that reversing the childhood obesity epidemic in the U.S. will be a long slog. While obesity rates among children and teens appear to have leveled off in recent years, nearly a third remain overweight, and about 17% are obese.
And while many cities and towns have programs and events to attack […]

MEwens
California children’s hospitals aren’t dishing up particularly healthful fare, a new study shows.
Researchers from UCLA and the Rand Corp. report in the journal Academic Pediatrics that of the 16  food venues serving 14 hospitals studied in July 2010, 81% offered unhealthful “impulse items” — think freezers stocked with ice-cream treats — near the […]

MEwens
Managing HIV: New CDC research shows that the majority of patients with HIV in the U.S. aren’t receiving medications and care necessary to control the virus enough to prevent them from passing it to others or impacting their own health, partly because some don’t know they’re infected, the WSJ reports. Only about 28% […]

MEwens
Hmmmm … what looks good?
If you snack in between meals — and who doesn’t? — and are also trying to lose weight, new research may offer some tips.
A study published in the December edition of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association finds that snacking at midmorning was associated with losing less weight […]

MEwens
You might want to give your high-school student an extra helping of sweet potatoes or squash for Thanksgiving dinner.
A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirms just how few fruits and vegetables high-school students are eating. More than a quarter of 10,765 students surveyed in the 2010 National Youth […]