More Fruits and Vegetables in Kids Diets Means Lower Risk of Early Heart Disease, Say Experts

Photo courtesy of The Tehran Times Daily Newspaper.

We all know that adding more fruits and vegetables to our family’s diet is important, but it’s good to remember why. Besides improving our own health, we also teach our kids healthy eating habits that will benefit them for a lifetime.

Between lives that run at a frenzied pace and media marketing of high fat meals, in recent decades healthy eating has dropped dangerously low on people’s priority lists. And, there’s a price for this.

Around the world, and especially in America, people are getting heavier and heavier, developing more and more health problems, and teaching their children the same bad eating habits – consequences are children developing early risk factors for heart disease by the time they reach puberty.

Heart disease is when enough blood can’t circulate to the heart muscle, which slowly damages its ability to function.

The American Heart Association just published a study which said that children as early as nine years old were showing precursors to heart disease, including  obesity, elevated blood pressure, and high Low-Density Lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, which is the bad kind. Teen smoking was also considered a risk factor.

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Curry Compound Kills Cancer Cells in University Research Lab Tests

Whether we realize it at the time or not, everything we eat has some sort of effect on our health - positive or negative, but never neutral.

Before synthetic modern medicines (and some of them work wonders), millenniums of people stayed in great health by the foods and medicines they derived from nature.

Turmeric has anticancer chemical. Photo by sallybernstein.com.

Well taking some lessons from the past, many researchers in highly respected institutions of medical science are starting to re-examine the properties of the foods and spices we get from nature. They’re finding some promising chemical compounds with properties capable of both contributing to the prevention and fighting of many serious conditions and diseases, such as cancer.

Most recently, a study was published in the British Journal of Cancer, found that certain molecules found in a curry spice have been shown to kill oesophageal (also spelled as esophageal) cancer cells in laboratory tests.

Scientists at the Cork Cancer Research Center, in Ireland, treated oesophageal cancer cells with curcumin, which is a chemical found in the curry spice turmeric. They found that the curcumin started to kill cancer cells within 24 hours.

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Undiagnosed Celiac Disease Contributing to Premature Deaths, Says Mayo Clinic Study

Celiac Disease- more commonly known as the gluten allergy making people unable to eat grains such as wheat, rye, and barley- is becoming an increasingly lethal problem in America, according to Dr. Joseph Murray, the Mayo Clinic gastroenterologist who led a study published this month in Gastroenterology.

“It now affects about one in every 100 people. Part of the problem is that Celiac Disease symptoms are variable and can be mistaken for other diseases that are more common, such as irritable bowel syndrome.

“Some studies have suggested that for every person who has been diagnosed with Celiac Disease, there are 30 who have it, but are not diagnosed. Also, given the nearly quadrupled mortality risk for silent Celiac Disease that we have shown in our study, getting more patients and health professionals to consider the possibility of the disease is important,” said Murray.

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Parents and Schools: Joining Together to Make Food Allergy Management Work

Image courtesy of Chelsey Amer NutritionMaking sure students with food allergies are safe in schools is always a community effort, joining everyone together- parents, the allergic children, schoolmates, medical providers, school faculty, and public officials who make policy.

The greatest advocates though for allergic children must always be their parents. This was a key theme of the third and final session of the School Nutrition Foundation’s webinar series dealing with food allergies.

Parents are the ones who need to both inform everyone else about their children’s medical issues as well as become educated about what benefits their children are entitled to have.

Emphasizing this position was Deb Scherrrer, vice president of education programs at the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network, who said, “The parents educate the school staff about the child’s medical condition. They collaborate with the school chain to establish avoidance strategies and participate in the development of the emergency plan.”

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January Food Festivals Nationwide

We all love to eat and some of us love to cook! With this in mind, I came across a section at Delish.com called Food Festivals and Cook Offs that I had to share. They make a list of what they consider to be the best events around the country divided by month.

For January, they have everything from a seafood festival in Florida to wine and chocolate tasting event in New Jersey to a rib-cook off in California. There are also healthier events like an oatmeal festival in Colorado and a carrot festival in California, but I thought I’d mention the more fun stuff first.

Any way you slice it, it’s worth visiting the site to see what interesting events are going on in your area.