Health Care Advice

It’s no secret that our generation has become a fast food society. If we don’t feel like cooking or have a long day at work, we order pizza or some other take out meal. Lunch hours don’t give us much time for nourishment. The choices are minimal when we have to choose a meal from a vending machine. We usually have options that are far from appetizing. Such options usually include lunchmeat sandwiched between two slices of bread that is similar to cardboard or microwavable noodles that are more rubbery than a bouncy ball. If you choose to forego the vending machine then you probably end up dashing over to the closest fast food restaurant where you quickly inhale the usual burger and fries. Your taste buds may be content momentarily but your digestive system probably isn’t too happy. There’s nothing wrong with fast food once in awhile but unfortunately for some people it becomes a way of life.

We are seeing more obesity in children at younger ages. The rise in childhood obesity has been steadily climbing in recent years. Children eat more fast food meals as well as junk food for snacks. It seems as if children don’t get much exercise these days either. They spend hours in front of the television playing video games, talking on the phone or spending time on the computer. They don’t spend nearly as much time outside running and playing physical games or sports as children did in the past. This makes healthy eating that much more important. Lack of exercise and fast food feeding are definitely not a healthy combination.

You can break the fast food habit without eliminating fast food from your family’s diet entirely. Limit fast food. If you don’t have time to cook dinner every night, cook when you have time and freeze meals for use when you can’t be home or are too busy to prepare a meal. When shopping for groceries buy more fresh fruit and healthy snacks. Limit the amount of potato chips and cookies you purchase. Most adults as well as children love snacks such as chips but we also tend to gorge ourselves on these items.

We can set good eating habits for our children by practicing proper nutrition ourselves. Parents can become so concerned with making sure their children are eating enough that nutrient rich food may get overshadowed by empty calories. Such an oversight is not intentional but more likely the result of hectic lifestyles, demanding work schedules and society in general. In order to live up to today’s standards both financially and societal, many people have become workaholics out of necessity. In a majority of families both parents work full-time jobs and juggle a variety of household chores. Conveniences that are time saving and make life easier are welcomed.

Television bombards us with dozens of fast food and junk food commercials every day that make it difficult to resist succumbing to the ease of a fast food restaurant or pizza delivery. As mentioned previously, fast food is fine as long as it doesn’t become the main staple of nutrition. Children need more than burgers, fries and pizza and snacks don’t always have to mean cookies and chips. Make your child’s meal a well-rounded eating experience. Try to gradually introduce your child to new foods by using different recipes and buying food items you usually don’t purchase. Many children are not eager to try new foods and will insist that they don’t like certain foods although they’ve never tried them. Be creative; create your own recipes. Your kids will be amazed at what you can come up with and so will you. The kids may have some ideas of their own too. Eat healthy and have some fun doing it.

When you’re ready to get out of the kitchen, spend some time outdoors and take the kids with you. There are plenty of outdoor activities for every season of the year. They might actually enjoying spending some time away from the television and video games.

This article was written by Jacob Mabille, sponsored by Health Guidance.

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Americans spend more money on fast food than higher education, personal computers, software, or new cars.

90% of America’s food money is used to buy factory-fresh, processed foods.

90% of American kids ages 3 to 9 eat at fast food places at least once per month.

61% of Americans are obese. Only 20% exercise. There are 167,993 diet book titles. They’re all useless since diets don’t work long term.

14% of Americans eat mostly fast food. For the 18 to 24 age segment, that’s 22% eating mostly fast food.

All of this results in an epidemic of lethal obesity, ushering in cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and arthritis prematurely.

But it gets worse. Not only do Americans have a huge appetite for poor food choices, many believe the big lie of allopathic medicine and Big Pharma-namely, there’s a safe, effective pill and/or operation for every ill (real or imaginary).

There are supersized pharmaceutical firms in the US, affectionally called “Big Pharma.”

Like many other old line American giant companies, they are starting to suffer from “icon toppling,” being dethroned gradually in the marketplace.

During the last three years, these firms have cut 70,000 jobs. Six of 10 of their top selling drugs are experiencing stagnant or declining sales.

Equities markets have been unkind to Big Pharma. Five firmsPfizer, Merck, Bristol Myers, Squibb, and Schering-Plough–have lost $34 billion in market value, down 54% in only three years.

Is Big Pharma following in the footsteps of Ford and General Motors?

For the health and safety of the public, let’s hope so.

Drugs are dangerous and over-prescribed, often given as the patient obeys TV commercials to “ask your doctor” and demand this or that drug. 70% of the time doctors approve these requests, often very reluctantly.

Big Pharma has had a number of embarrassing recalls and some costly lawsuits claiming huge damages from use of its products.

Most of top-selling Big Pharma brands will experience patent expiration by 2011, with few new blockbuster drugs coming along to keep the cash flowing.

But all is not negative in Big Pharma land. The Food and Drug Administration, created during the Depression to make sure that our foods and drugs are safe, coddles Big Pharma and the large agribusiness firms, making sure above all that company profits are safe and sure.

Here’s one crazy example of an FDA run amuck. The FDA has warned cherry growers not to make health claims even though a study funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture determined that cherries have a low glycemic index, are fat free, sodium free, and high in vitamins C, B6, E and folic acidand rate
high on the ORAC antioxidant scale.

The FDA position was that if such health claims are to be made, then the cherry growers must get apply for permission to have cherries sold as an FDA approved drug. Insane!!!

The U.S. Supreme Court, in an earlier case, Thompson v. Western States Medical Center, rebuked the FDA’s “highly paternalistic” approach to keeping information from people for their own good.

The Court found that “bans against truthful, non-misleading speech…usually rest solely on the offensive assumption that the public will respond ‘irrationally’ to the truth.”

“The First Amendment directs us to be skeptical of regulations that seek to keep people in the dark for what the government perceives to be in their own good,” said the Court.

Ouch, Big Pharma. Do you make pain killers strong enough for judicial rebukes like this?

Big Pharma is getting tough competition from generic makers and entreprenurial biotech drug firms–not to mention the rapidly growing alternative medicine business.

One Wall Street analyst recently suggested that the Big 8 merge down to the Big 4, as happened with major American oil companies to enhance profits. Just a few years ago, there were more than 10 major oil companies. Now, thanks to mergers, there are four huge oils firms.

What should you do to survive the dangerous fast food firms, “food” companies manufacturing chemically-laden processed rubbish disguised as food, the conventional medicine and Big Pharma hustle as well as FDA nonsense?

Follow these suggestions:

1. Eat mostly organic food. Do not eat fast food or processed food.

2. Exercise vigorously at least five times per week.

3. Take a strong multivitamin daily.

4. Use high quality nutritional supplements to help
change or improve any health issues you may have.

5. If your doctor is not cooperative in these matters,
fire him or her and find a doctor knowledgeable and
enthused about natural means of healing.

6. Never accept a doctor’s prescription without intelligent
resistance and skepticism. Check out the drug yourself
online. Talk to a pharmacist. And learn what natural,
alternative remedies may do as well as, or better than, what’s
being prescribed.

7. Do not let a doctor and/or a school talk you into prescribing
psychotropic drugs for your children to calm them down to
control ADD or any other bogus, pop-culture “disease”. Get
you kids off of caffeine and sugar and discipline them in love.

Forget suicide by fork. Don’t take pills for every ill. There
is a better way-stay well, naturally.

John J. Alquist owns and operates Alquist Enterprises. He offers business consulting, professional speaking, and business writing services. To visit John online, go to http://www.tell-it-well.com or email him at john@tell-it-weel.com

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A staggering number of adults and children are either overweight or obese in the United States today. Obesity is one of the main contributing factors associated with heart disease, type 2 diabetes, arthritis, high blood pressure, psychological disorders like depression, and some forms of cancer. Obesity is no longer an adult disease; its prevalence has nearly tripled among adolescents within the past two decades. There are a number of factors associated with maintaining a healthy body weight. These include genetics, body composition, environment, and physical activity and its relationship to metabolism, as well as excessive calorie intake.

GENETICS AND METABOLISM

Calorie expenditure is not completely dependent on exercise. Metabolism is an involuntary activity that affects an individual’s ability to burn calories. When you are awake and resting, calories are burned just to keep you alive; this is considered your resting energy expenditure (REE).

The REE between men and women is significantly different. A woman’s metabolism is 10-15 percent slower than a man’s because males naturally have more muscle mass, while females have a greater proportion of body fat.

In addition, hormone activity, like the hormones produced by the thyroid gland, establish overall metabolic rate. Body composition, unlike genetics, can be altered to some extent.

BODY COMPOSITION AND METABOLISM

REE naturally decreases with age because of muscle mass loss. As a result, weight loss at a younger age is easier to accomplish. In general, losing body weight from fat or muscle lowers daily REE. It should be noted that at rest fat burns approximately 1-2 calories per hour versus muscle, which burns about 30-35 calories per hour. Therefore, maintaining body weight while decreasing fat and increasing muscle will raise REE greatly.

ENVIRONMENT AND METABOLISM

The last and most modifiable factor for REE is environment. Certain stimulants can elicit a response in metabolism. Two of these that are used on a day-to-day basis are caffeine and nicotine. It has been reported in studies that two to three cups of coffee can raise REE as much as 12 percent. Cigarettes, which contain nicotine, also stimulate metabolism. People who smoke cigarettes often experience a weight gain after quitting. This may be due to a decrease in REE, as well as increased caloric consumption.

Temperature is another major environmental factor affecting metabolism. In cold environments, the combination of releasing certain hormones (i.e. adrenaline) and shivering can increase REE up to 400 percent. REE is raised in warmer environments due to increased cardiovascular activity and sweating.

PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND METABOLISM

As you can see from the examples above, your metabolic rate is regulated by a number of factors. Exercise, in general, will increase your metabolic rate. When you exercise your body releases stored fuels to aid in energy production. Remember, your body composition greatly affects how many calories you burn in a typical day. Therefore, the more muscle mass you have, the more calories you will burn because muscle is metabolically active. Resistance exercise is the best way to increase muscle mass, while aerobic activity is better to increase your circulatory system and strengthen your heart.

However, exercising is just one part of the picture. In order to maintain a healthy body weight, you must match your energy intake with your energy output.

EXCESSIVE CALORIE INTAKE = SUPERSIZED WAISTLINES

The average adult consumes about one million calories per year. The human body has evolved to be a highly efficient system, which is the reason why excessive caloric intake leads to weight gain. For example, if you were to eat just over 50 calories every day of your energy expenditure, you could expect to gain about five pounds of additional fat per year. This is equal to just five potato chips.

Everyone knows that fast food is not the healthiest option, yet millions of people visit fast food restaurants everyday. Although fast food is not the only way people get too many calories, it is a major contributor.

If you were to go to Wendy’s and order a Classic Single Burger Value Meal, you will probably meet half of your allotted calories for a single day, given you were an average adult on a 2000-calorie diet. One Classic Single, with all the fixings, has about 410 calories, a Biggie fry has about 470 calories, and a 22-fl. oz regular soda has about 277 calories, for a whopping total of 1157 calories. Now if you were to Biggie Size that order, the total calories would increase to about 1383 calories.

Burger King burger’s are flame broiled so does that make them healthier? Not exactly. A BK Whopper with cheese contains about 850 calories. If you ordered the Value Meal, which includes a large fry and 22 fl. oz soda, your meal total has been raised to 1630 calories. Going for chicken instead of beef is a healthy alternative, as long as it is grilled breast meat without the breading.

Subway has been marketing itself as a healthy alternative to other fast food chains. What they fail to tell you in the commercials, or mention in small print, is that you cannot have a regular soda, extra condiments (i.e. cheese or mayo), or a 12″ sub to consider it a low-fat or low-calorie meal. One 12″ roasted chicken breast sub has about 622 calories, without cheese or mayo. Without chips, if you added a medium 22 fl. oz regular soda to that meal, it has just been increased to 900 calories. Even worse is the signature Subway 12″ meatball sub, which has about 1000 calories.

As you can see from the examples above, fast food can really pack a calorie-punch. Value Meals seem like a great value when you consider the cost of creating your own meal versus one suggested to you. There is nothing wrong with going to fast-food joints once in awhile. The problem lies when you frequent these places too often. I only mentioned total calories here, but I should remind you that these places not only offer a lot of calories but high amounts of total fat, particularly saturated and trans, and cholesterol.

So what does it take to burn off a Whopper, French fries, or a sub everyday? Let me ask you this. “While you supersize those meals, are you also supersizing your exercise routine?” To burn off an average value meal (approximately 1500 calories) you could choose from any of the following activity options:

* Run 15 miles in 2 1/2 hours (10 minute/mile pace).
* Climb flights of stairs for 7 1/2 hours.
* Walking at a light to moderate pace for 10 hours.
* Drive your car for 13 1/2 hours.
* Stand up for 15 hours.

As you can see from these examples, it takes an excessive amount of activity to burn off those calories. So does this mean that you should never eat at a fast food place ever again? No.

If you were to go to these places, I would first tell you to look at the calorie content of the foods that you intend to purchase. Fast food restaurants should have their nutrition facts available; although you may have to do some searching. Just a few quick tips to cut calories:

1. Order small sides with your burger
2. Drink diet vs regular soda
3. Load the veggies on your sub and use vinegar instead of mayo

All in all, eating too many calories, while not being physically active, are the two main causes of weight gain. If you eat too many calories, you must also boost your exercise routine to compensate for this. Adjustments in nutrition, exercise, and overall lifestyle are the best solution. Eat moderate amounts and adjust your day-to-day activities to reflect changes in diet.

Chris Theberge is the founder of the Nutrition and Food Web Archive, NutriWeb Designs, and Dietitian Designs. Visit The Nutrition and Food Web Archive for free nutrition and food-related resources.

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