Youngsters are not generally aware of the calorific impact of common and popular sugar filled drinks. That is the clear conclusion of researchers from John Hopkins University who believe that telling youngsters of the high calorie content of such drinks makes comparatively little difference in dissuading them from buying them – whereas telling them how much physical exercise would be needed to burn off those calories really does make a big difference. Delivering the information in stark terms that shows the impact of these sugar filled, calorie heavy drinks (or “soda” as it is more commonly known in the USA) really does make adolescent think twice about whether they want them or not.
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The idea that highly processed ‘junk food’ can cause addictions in consumers is a concept that makes you take a deep breath and think again. Could it really be true that eating modern processed foods can actually cause people to crave more and more, in the same way that cocaine users might want more and [...]
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The Department of Health has announced that McDonald’s, the ubiquitous fast food chain, will introduce calorie information to its menus at all of its 1,200 UK restaurants from Wednesday this week. The idea is to help customers actually see how many calories are contained in the foods that they buy when they are out and about. It is part of the government’s Responsibility Deal, which seeks to bring private sector companies on board to help tackle public health issues.
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A new report published on Wednesday by the US-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), says that Americans are drinking far too many sugary soft drinks (or sodas as they are called in the States). Half of Americans are drinking at least one soda or sugary drink a day according to the report which also says that one in 20 Americans consumes at least four cans of these beverages a day.
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The Lancet, the world’s leading medical journal, has today published a series of papers which set out in devastating detail how the trend of four decades of rising obesity worldwide will affect society if left unabated. In the UK, already dubbed the “fattest nation in Europe”, there will be 26 million obese adults in the UK by 2030, comprising nearly half of the adult male population and 43% of adult females. Today the figure stands at 15 million.
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By Toutatis! Well would you believe it! Researchers led by Marcel Kamp of the Neurosurgical department at the Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Germany have pored through all 34 volumes of the beloved Asterix comic books and identified 704 discrete cases of traumatic head or brain injury. It is amazing to my mind that this should constitute a subject for serious scientific and academic study, but there it is.
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