Sports Fitness Health

So what do you think is the point of a front-of-package health claims program?

I would imagine that most people would answer that a front-of-package health claims program ought to allow for easy comparisons between different foods. Certainly that’d be my definition.

Comparison between foods would be a rather important feature as presumably the front-of-package claim system is meant to be utilized as a shopping shortcut.

With that in mind, I found a recent post by Katie Jessop, a Heart and Stroke Foundation Health Check dietitian, to be very telling. Read the full article…

The CDC released today a first of its kind analysis of racial disparities in health with the hope of drawing attention to some persistent gaps and shedding light on unexpected ones.

While race was the primary focus of the report, it also delved into differences in health outcomes by income, gender and geography. The report is huge and has plenty of interesting — and disturbing — findings. Among the biggest disparities:

     + Black babies are 1.5 to 3 times more likely to die than infants born to women of other races

     + Heart disease and stroke, the nation’s leading causes of death, account for the largest proportion of inequality in life expectancy between whites and blacks, despite the existence of low-cost treatment.

     + Men of all races are nearly four times more likely to commit suicide than women. American In

Read the full article…

Here is another lesson in why you can’t believe everything food labels tell you.

The Dannon Company was ordered by the federal government to pay a $21 million fine and stop making exaggerated health claims for two very popular Dannon products under an agreement with the federal government and attorneys general from 39 states, according to an article in USA Today.

Many of you have probably seen the commercials – using high profiles figures like Jamie Lee Curtis – where Dannon claims a serving of its Activia yogurt will make people regular and help with digestive problems.

It also said the DanActive drinks fended off colds and flu.

The Federal Trade Commission said Wednesday Dannon must stop making the claims.

My colleague Liz Kay also wrote about the issue.

“These types of misleading claims are enough to give consumers indigestion,” said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. Read the full article…

Every wonder what global health aid workers do to improve life in some really downtrodden places that have suffered from war and famine and natural disasters?

Baltimore photographer David Snyder spent 57 days on assignment for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Foundation. About 75 of his 6,800 pictures from Kenya, Brazil, Peru, Haiti, India and Tanzania, as well as field notes, will go on display beginning this Saturday at the CDC’s Global Health Odyssey Museum.

Among the pictures are images of “Mama Sprinkles,” who distributes micronutrient packets to families in Kenya’s Nyanza Province, and CDC scientists who conducted disease surveillance after the earthquake in Haiti.

“Over the past year, I have seen CDC and other public health professionals in action and I have been struck by the commitment and dedication of these individuals who are creating a safer, healthier world for all of us,” said Snyder in a statement. “I spent hou

Read the full article…

A new report from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that more Americans are living in poverty and more lack health insurance.

The report, called “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2009,” found the median household income was $49,777, about the same as 2008.

But it found that 43.6 million people were living in poverty, up from 13.2 million the year before, and the official poverty rate grew to 14.3 percent, up from 13.2 percent the year before. It was the third annual increase in a row.

The number of people without health insurance is also on the rise. It was 50.7 million last year and 46.3 million the year before — or 16.7 percent versus 15.4 percent.

A sign of the times?