Category Archives: Diet And Food

CHARLOTTE, N.C., Oct. 8, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --As Charlotte prepares for the upcoming Bank of America 500 select Walmart stores will offer authentic NASCAR merchandise and host exclusive fan events starting Oct. 9. Customers are invited to attend these special events and enjoy driver appearances and show car and simulator displays perfect to safely get behind the wheel and feel the power of NASCAR on Oct. 9-12 from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., varying by location.

"Walmart is the champion of the racing fan, and we are committed to providing customers with savings on authentic merchandise, as well as unique race time experiences," said David Cruse, Walmart market manager. "We want to give fans affordability and accessibility, so they can enjoy race time with their families and friends."

"NASCAR fans that descend into Cabarrus County spend millions of dollars that help our local economy by generating tax revenues for local governments," said Donna Carpenter, president and CEO of the Cabarrus County Convention & Visitors Bureau. "The economic impact that visitors create trickles throughout the county, via hotels, restaurants and retail stores. In essence, the speedway is the driver, and we are the pit crew! It's a win-win for everyone."

Race Time at WalmartIn addition to the fan events happening in Walmart parking lots, area Walmart stores will feature savings on all the food and snacks you need to enjoy the race, plus authentic NASCAR merchandise such as T-shirts and racing flags, with an even bigger selection of exclusive products available at Walmart.com/NASCAR.

Participating stores in the Charlotte area include:

Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2012Unilever's Cole Whitt Driver Appearance noon 1 p.m.Displays free and open to the public include the Cheez-It Show Car Simulator, Degree Show Car Simulator, Hefty Show Car Simulator, No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil Dodge Charger, 5-hour Energy Show Car, Coca-Cola 2-Seat Racing Simulator, Oreo Ritz Show Car, Wheaties Show Car, Kingsford Ultimate Tailgate Truck, M&M's Show Car, Simulator Pod and Trophy Display, No. 24 Pepsi MAX Show Car and No. 88 Diet Mountain Dew Show Car at:

Store #1156 169 Norman Station Blvd. Mooresville, N.C. 10 a.m. 4 p.m.

Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2012Pennzoil's Sam Hornish Driver Appearance from noon 2 p.m.Displays free and open to the public include the 5-hour Energy Show Car, No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil Dodge Charger, Wheaties Show Car, Hefty Show Car Simulator, Coca-Cola 2-Seat Racing Simulator, Oreo Ritz Show Car, Degree Show Car Simulator, No. 24 Pepsi MAX Show Car and No. 88 Diet Mountain Dew Show Car at:

Store #2005 2420 Supercenter Drive N.E. Kannapolis, N.C. 10 a.m. 4 p.m.

Displays free and open to the public include the Cheez-It Show Car Simulator, Kingsford Ultimate Tailgate Truck, and M&M's Show Car and Simulator Pod and Trophy Display at:

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Charlotte Area Walmart Stores to host NASCAR Driver Appearances, Racing Simulators, Fun for Fans Starting Oct. 9

Its a common predicament: Diet, and youll successfully lose weight, but as soon as you stop, the scale starts ticking upward once again.

A new study addresses the problem of weight loss in the long-term, looking at participants total weight loss four years after they stopped one of three popular diets.

The winner? The Mediterranean diet, with its adherents losing more weight than those who ate low-carb or low-fat diets.

For the study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, scientists randomly selected 322 moderately obese participants for one of three weight loss plans in a workplace study.

The dieters were given choices of diet. Those on the low-fat diet consumed grains, vegetables and fruits and limited their consumption of fats and sweets. Low carbohydrate diet participants followed the Atkins diet but had no restriction on caloric intake.

Mediterranean diets were rich in vegetables and low in red meat, with poultry and fish replacing beef and lamb.

The initial study was carried out between July 2005 and June 2007 was completed after two years. Researchers followed up after another four years.

After six years the total weight loss was 3.1 kg (6.8 pounds) in the Mediterranean group, followed by 1.7 kg (3.7 pounds) in the low carbohydrate group, and 0.6 kg (1.3 pounds) in the low fat group.

The weight loss was significant for the Mediterranean group and the low-carbohydrate group but not for the low fat group, concluded study authors Dan Schwarzfuchs of the Nuclear Research Centre Negev, and Rachel Golan of Ben Gurion University of the Negev.

In an interview with the Star, Dr. Schwarzfuchs said when undertaking a diet it was important to take into consideration personal food preferences and health.

Link:
Mediterranean diet best for lasting weight loss, low-carb also works: Study

Seattle, WA (PRWEB) October 09, 2012

hCGTreatments / Diet Doc hCG Diet and Weight Loss Diet Plans introduces a free personalized nutrition supplement health plan called My Diet Doc Health Questionnaire to improve overall health and help with fast weight loss.

hCGTreatments / Diet Doc hCG Diet and Weight Loss Plans introduced a free personalized nutritional supplement health plan called My DietDoc Health Questionnaire to improve overall health.

A free personalized nutritional supplement health plan called My Diet Doc Health Questionnaire to improve overall health was introduced by hCGTreatments / Diet Doc hCG Diet and Weight Loss Plans. This free $200 personalized medical supplement plan that carries out a comprehensive, subjective review of the entire organ system throughout the body is based on well-respected medical nutritional science journals and texts and incorporates these data points into a sophisticated, nutritional and health algorithm that identifies which organ is not performing well. Available for new patients, the review of organ functions by My Diet Doc Health Questionnaire helps dieters identify poorly performing organ systems that cause weight loss slow down, memory and mood problems, woman and mens sexual health problems, fatigue and more.

This health questionnaire can be completed online and once a person submits all the answers, they receive a written report on the findings from the clinical team at hCGTreatments / Diet Doc hCG Diet and Weight Loss Plans, including the doctors recommendations for overall improvement. The company recommends taking the test again in 30 days to see the improvement in overall body functions, memory, men/womens health and much more because underlying health issues are addressed. As the provider of the only doctor designed, physician managed, and medically supervised weight loss diet, the new online health questionnaire that gives symptom-based results unique to each patient is a one-of-a-kind service is available nationwide.

hCGTreatments / Diet Doc hCG Diet and Weight Loss Plan believes that a comprehensive, individualized supplement health plan improves the health of all dieters in the long run and this service is an added benefit to their weight loss diet. Some of the body systems reviewed are Digestive health, Liver and kidneys, Metabolism, including thyroid, Blood sugar, Heart, Brain function: memory/mood, Immune system, Respiratory, lungs, Urological, and Musculoskeletal health. My Diet Doc Health Questionnaire is a new way to review the entire organ system and discover poorly performing organs help improve overall health. It can be used solo or in conjunction with the weight loss diet that is designed by hCGTreatments / Diet Doc hCG Diet and Weight Loss Plans for effective, safe, and fast weight loss. The combination of this personalized weight loss diet that is created for each person based on their health history, gender, age and lifestyle and My Diet Doc Health Questionnaire is the perfect recipe for fast weight loss and improved health. Diet Doc hCG Diet & Weight Loss, which provides rapid, safe, medically, supervised weight loss. Doctors never review the entire organ system as part of their initial overall health screening because it would take too much time. This is where hCGTreatments / Diet Doc hCG Diet and Weight Loss Plans, a top innovator in alternative health care today stands out.

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Diet Doc Announces My Diet Doc Health Questionnaire, the First Comprehensive Health Questionnaire That Unveils ...

A major source of toxic mercury exposure, fish consumption appears somewhat protective against a widespread neurologic disorder in children

Web edition : Monday, October 8th, 2012

For pregnant women, diets rich in fish can offer their babies protection against developing behaviors associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, a new study finds. Yet for most Americans, fish consumption is the leading source of exposure to mercury a potent neurotoxic pollutant that has been linked to a host of health problems, including delays in neural development.

Data from the new study, published online October 8 in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, demonstrate that low-mercury diets and regular fish consumption are not mutually exclusive, says epidemiologist and study leader Susan Korrick of Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston. It really depends on the type of fish that youre eating, she says. In fact, some study participants had been eating more than two servings of fish weekly yet accumulated relatively little mercury.

As part of a long-running study of children born during the 1990s in New Bedford, Mass., 515 women who had just given birth completed a dietary survey. About 420 also provided samples of their hair for mercury testing. About eight years later, Korricks team administered a battery of IQ and other tests to assess behaviors associated with ADHD in the children.

The children spanned a continuum running from almost no ADHD-related behaviors to those with outright clinical disease. A moms hair-mercury level tended to be associated with where her child fell along this spectrum.

Although this study did not collect data on the species of fish eaten, Korrick points to work by others showing that tuna, swordfish and shark can be quite high in mercury, while salmon and cod tend to pick up relatively little of the toxic metal from their environment.

Among women with less than 1 microgram of mercury per gram of hair, fish consumption was associated with a lower risk of ADHD-type behaviors in their children. Over that threshold, increasing mercury levels were associated with an increased risk of ADHD-type behaviors in the kids, regardless of how much fish their moms ate.

Children of women with hair mercury levels in the top 20 percent of the study population showed a 50 to 60 percent increased risk of ADHD-related behaviors, Korrick says which is not trivial. However, she adds, most children showing ADHD-related traits were still considered to be within the normal range and not maladaptive.

On some tests, boys showed a greater sensitivity to mercury than girls. These tests included components of the IQ assessment related to attention and one computer test of attentiveness (where children had to press a button as quickly as they could when they saw the silhouette of a cat but not other animals).

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Fish in mom's diet may alter kids' behavior

Whats the hardest part of her body to work?

Her brain.

Bodybuilder Diana Dumas said overcoming exhaustion and tired limbs takes will power some just dont have.

Diets, weights, and motivation become a part of everyday life, Dumas said.

Not everyone can do bodybuilding. Its a lot of work, she said Saturday at the 2012 FouadAbiadOpen a Windsor competition that judges bodybuilding, muscularity, body condition, stage presence and personality.

The 45-year-old Dumas hasnt competed in a competition since 1998 but said this year she felt like the contest was calling her.

For almost two months prior to the contest Dumas cut dairy, salt and sugar from her diet. She trains two hours a day, lifting weights for one and doing cardio for the other.

She eats half a cup of oatmeal in the morning, six ounces of chicken, half a cup of white rice, half a cup of broccoli, two protein shakes throughout the day and a tablespoon of peanut butter at night.

Dumas said the hardest part of her diet is eating flavourless food. To cope, she adds mustard. A lot of it.

I dont know how many jars of mustard I bought. Every time I went to the store people would stare at me carrying all this mustard.

Read more:
Bodybuilders say sport often misunderstood

A healthy non-smoking man, consuming a normal western diet (meat, vegetables, bread and alcohol) collected five consecutive complete bowel movements. He then added an extra 150 g of fat (from butter, cheese, milk, chocolate, peanuts, bacon and eggs) to his daily diet for 2 weeks, and collected four further consecutive bowel movements in the second week. After 6 months on his normal diet, he added 30 g of wheat bran to his daily diet for 3 weeks, and collected four complete stool samples in the third week. Aqueous faecal extracts were prepared and assayed for auxotrophic growth-enhancement and bacterial mutagenicity (using fluctuation tests with Salmonella typhimurium TA100 and Escherichia coli WP2uvrApKM101). There was no significant difference in faecal wet weight between normal and high-fat collections, but addition of 30 g bran was associated with a 1.8-fold increase in stool weight, in good agreement with published data. Fluctuation tests showed that normal and high-fat samples were mutagenic to S. typhimurium TA100 and to E. coli WP2uvrApKM101. There was considerable variation in mutagenic activity between consecutive bowel movements. However, there was no significant difference in mutagenicity between normal and high-fat samples. Faecal samples collected during the course of the high-fibre diet were significantly less mutagenic to both bacterial strains. Changes in auxotrophic growth-enhancing activity could not account for these changes in mutagenicity, since the pattern of change in growth-enhancement was very different from that seen for mutagenicity.

Photo: flickr/timtak

Related content: Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: The fecal odor of sick hedgehogs mediates olfactory attraction of the tick Ixodes hexagonus. Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: At least my experiments dont require fresh slug feces Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Jeez people, enough with the cockroaches in your colons already.

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NCBI ROFL: Pilot study of the effect of diet on the mutagenicity of human faeces.

LONDON, Oct 7 Scientists are debunking the myth that the rise in allergies is due to a modern preoccupation with cleanliness, suggesting rather that weve lost touch with microbial old friends.

A report from the International Scientific Forum on Home Hygiene released this week challenges the claim that the epidemic rise in allergies is due to overzealous housecleaning and a fondness for bleach cleaners.

Co-author of the report and honorary professor at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Sally Bloomfield says: The underlying idea that microbial exposure is crucial to regulating the immune system is right. But the idea that children who have fewer infections, because of more hygienic homes, are then more likely to develop asthma and other allergies does not hold up.

Rather than being too clean, humans have undergone radical lifestyle changes in the past century, including to their diets and work and home environments, as well as in environmental stress factors, such as physical inactivity in the workplace, which can hinder immunity, noted the scientists. Additionally, they note that even the cleanest houses in modern times are teeming with bacteria, dust mites, viruses, and fungi.

Still, while there is no shortage of microbes in our lives, we are in touch with a smaller diversity of friendly microbes than we have been through the course of human history, noted the scientists.

The rise in allergies and inflammatory diseases seems at least partly due to gradually losing contact with the range of microbes our immune systems evolved with, way back in the Stone Age, writes co-author Dr. Graham Rook. Only now are we seeing the consequences of this, doubtless also driven by genetic predisposition and a range of factors in our modern lifestyle from different diets and pollution to stress and inactivity. It seems that some people now have inadequately regulated immune systems that are less able to cope with these other factors.

Bloomfield hopes this approach will lead to a solution: One important thing we can do is to stop talking about being too clean and get people thinking about how we can safely reconnect with the right kind of dirt. AFP/Relaxnews

Original post:
Rise in allergies not due to humans being ‘too clean,’ scientists say

Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2012

Although both the ruling Democratic Party of Japan and the No. 1 opposition Liberal Democratic Party have chosen their new party leaders, the ruling and opposition forces still cannot agree on when to start an extraordinary Diet session. The primary responsibility rests on Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. He must fulfill his promise to then LDP chief Mr. Sadakazu Tanigaki to dissolve the Lower House "in the near future" by clearly showing when he will do so. If he does so, the ruling and opposition forces will easily agree on when to start the Diet session. A delay in the start of the session will have a great negative impact on the people's lives.

Two months have already passed since Mr. Noda made his promise on Aug. 8 to Mr. Tanigaki. New LDP leader Mr. Shinzo Abe pointed out that Mr. Noda's promise is one with the people. Komeito chief Mr. Natsuo Yamaguchi said that voting in the next Lower House election must come on or before Dec. 9.

If the Diet session fails to start early, the government's execution of the fiscal 2012 budget will become difficult because the last Diet session failed to enact a bill to float bonds to cover about 40 percent of the budget funds. The government has already started to cut back on budget spending. The Finance Ministry says that the budget funds will run out at the end of November. The Diet must start deliberations as soon as possible.

Because the next Lower House election must be held within a year, the Diet should immediately enact a bill to rectify the disparity in the value of a vote between depopulated rural areas and populated urban areas. If the next Lower House election is held without a rectification of the vote-value disparity, the Supreme Court may find the next election results to be unconstitutional and nullify them.

A bill submitted by the DPJ to rectify the vote-value disparity is too complicated. The ruling and opposition forces should quickly agree to pass a bill to reduce the number of single-seat constituencies by one each in five prefectures as this would be the easiest way to rectify the disparity.

For the sake of smooth Diet deliberations, the opposition, which controls the Upper House, should refrain from the practice of trying to force the ruling camp to accept its demands by refusing to deliberate on important bills, including one on social welfare reform.

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Diet must get to work

Oct. 3, 2012 Drop 30 pounds in two months!

Weve all seen ads for miracle diets that promise to help us shed weight in days, weeks, or months.

But what happens next?

Do people stay the course and maintain the loss, or regain the weight with a vengeance?

A team of Israeli researchers followed participants for four years after an initial two-year workplace-based study to try and answer these questions. Participants followed one of three weight loss plans: a low-fat, low-calorie diet; a Mediterranean-style, low-calorie diet; or a low-carb eating plan without calorie restrictions.

Overall, the Mediterranean diet led to the most dramatic changes, but people on the other diets also did pretty well. A Mediterranean diet is rich in fruits, vegetables, fish, whole grains, legumes, healthy fats like olive oil, and moderate amounts of alcohol. It is also low in sweets, meats, and saturated fats like butter.

Eighty-six percent of the participants were men, and most were considered moderately obese when the study began. Researchers also educated their spouses about the diet so changes could be made at home, too.

At two years, 85% of the participants were still following their diet programs. Participants on the Mediterranean diet and low-carb diet lost more weight than those on the low-fat diet.

Four years after the study officially ended, 67% of participants were still on their eating plan, 11% had switched to another a type of diet, and 22% were not dieting at all.

Everyone regained some of the weight they had lost in the original study, but all were thinner than when the study first began. The weight loss was highest in the Mediterranean and low-carb groups for the entire six-year period: about 7 pounds and close to 4 pounds, respectively. All participants also showed improvements in their total cholesterol levels.

View original post here:
Mediterranean Diet Tops List Of ‘Livable’ Diets

Scientists are debunking the myth that the rise in allergies is due to a modern preoccupation with cleanliness, suggesting rather that we've lost touch with microbial "old friends."

A report from the International Scientific Forum on Home Hygiene released this week challenges the claim that the epidemic rise in allergies is due to overzealous housecleaning and a fondness for bleach cleaners.

Co-author of the report and honorary professor at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Sally Bloomfield says: "The underlying idea that microbial exposure is crucial to regulating the immune system is right. But the idea that children who have fewer infections, because of more hygienic homes, are then more likely to develop asthma and other allergies does not hold up."

Rather than being "too clean," humans have undergone radical lifestyle changes in the past century, including to their diets and work and home environments, as well as in environmental stress factors, such as physical inactivity in the workplace, which can hinder immunity, noted the scientists. Additionally, they note that even the cleanest houses in modern times are teeming with bacteria, dust mites, viruses, and fungi.

Still, while there is no shortage of microbes in our lives, we are in touch with a smaller diversity of "friendly" microbes than we have been through the course of human history, noted the scientists.

"The rise in allergies and inflammatory diseases seems at least partly due to gradually losing contact with the range of microbes our immune systems evolved with, way back in the Stone Age," writes co-author Dr. Graham Rook. "Only now are we seeing the consequences of this, doubtless also driven by genetic predisposition and a range of factors in our modern lifestyle -- from different diets and pollution to stress and inactivity. It seems that some people now have inadequately regulated immune systems that are less able to cope with these other factors."

Bloomfield hopes this approach will lead to a solution: "One important thing we can do is to stop talking about being too clean' and get people thinking about how we can safely reconnect with the right kind of dirt."

http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2012/allergy_rises_not_down_to_being_too_clean__just_losing_touch_with__old_friends_.html

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Rise in allergies is not due to humans being 'too clean,' scientists say