With the quick swipe of a student ID and a plastic brown tray in hand, Megan Kono is left standing in the Dewick-MacPhie Dining Hall faced with a serious dilemma. As she moves from station to station, she must fight the ever-present temptation to grab a slice of fresh tomato pizza or dish out a serving of macaroni and cheese. She must walk quickly past the tub of French fries and the trays of cookies that Dewick offers on a daily basis.
As a swimmer Read the rest of this entry »

The Northeast Iowa Food and Fitness Initiative (FFI) has announced it is seeking requests for activities to support and build on its efforts. This initiative is about people working together to create vibrant communities where the healthy choice is the easy choice.
This work began in April 2007 when the W.K. Kellogg Foundation selected Northeast Iowa as one of nine communities locations across the country to become models of community change. Each Read the rest of this entry »

We don’t need another diet book. There are already far too many plans that all basically come down to the same thing: you have to cut something (carbs, fat, calories, anything but cabbage soup) and usually add exercise as well, in order to get results. Probably any of them could be effective if a person could follow them consistently for a long period of time.
But the trouble with diets is, first, a lot of people can’t seem to follow them religiously; Read the rest of this entry »

WASHINGTON (AP) — So, a guy walks into a restaurant. Who makes sure his food is safe? It depends on what he eats.
A cheese pizza that arrived at the restaurant frozen? The Food and Drug Administration is in charge of inspecting it.
A frozen pepperoni pizza? That’s the Agriculture Department.
A fresh pizza, made at the restaurant? Both departments would be responsible for the original ingredients, if the pizza has meat on it. What if he Read the rest of this entry »

“They put about $50 million into completely reconstructing the place – new roof, new separation area between the roaster and production lines,” said Bill Marler, a Seattle attorney who specializes in litigating food poisonings and was invited to ConAgra’s headquarters to discuss the outbreak last summer. He settled more than 1,200 salmonella poisoning cases with ConAgra for an undisclosed sum last year.
The redesigned facility is seen as state of Read the rest of this entry »

“Keep it simple, keep it consistent, keep it as close to nature as possible.” This is my wellness philosophy. Feel free to borrow from it, or adopt it outright. A few people have asked me why I include “as close to nature” Short answer: good common sense.
Good common sense tells me that all the scientific and medical miracles in the world can’t replace a life lived vibrantly. Modern medicine can help you fix problems once the ole’ body starts to Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve no doubt heard about the flap over using antibiotics in livestock. But a new story out in Environmental Health News shows that these drugs, apparently via manure, are finding their way into food crops that we eat.
by EHN’s Matthew Cimitile focuses on research out of the University of Minnesota that has some troubling implications. For instance, how might this drug transference figure into antibiotic resistance? From Cimitile’s story:
Scientists Read the rest of this entry »

“I think the FDA has not been able to catch some of these things as quickly as I expect them to catch them, so we’re going to be doing a complete review of FDA operations,” Obama told Matt Lauer during an interview broadcast on NBC’s “Today” show.
“At a bare minimum, we should be able to count on our government keeping our kids safe when they eat peanut butter,” the president said.
“That’s what Sasha eats for lunch,” Obama said, referring to his Read the rest of this entry »

will give away free generic drugs for the next three months.
The Landover-based grocer — which has 184 supermarkets and 164 pharmacies in Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and Washington, D.C. — will launch the program from Jan. 2 through March 21. About 36 prescription generic antibiotics will be free.
“We wanted to provide something to help customers in these tough economic times,” said Robin Michel, executive vice president Read the rest of this entry »

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government has increasingly relied on food-safety inspections performed by states, where budgets for inspections in many cases have remained stagnant and where overburdened officials are trained less than their federal counterparts and perform skimpier reviews, an Associated Press investigation has found.
The thoroughness of inspections performed by states has emerged as a key issue in the investigation of the national Read the rest of this entry »