Saturday, October 15, 2005

Kids Create Ads for Fresh Fruit

Bus riders in Seattle are seeing many of the traditional junk food advertisements on the buses transformed into child-created promotions for fresh fruits and vegetables. The campaign is sponsored by Washington State University Extension Food $ense Program through a grant from the King County STEPS to a Healthier US. The program has helped nearly a thousand minority and low income kids create posters for healthy foods which are featured on city buses. Its main goal is to improve the nutrition of low-income inner city kids by teaching them gardening, cooking and food self reliance skills.

Sunday, October 02, 2005

Just Say “Ommm”

Even with all of the press the obesity epidemic has incited, American waistlines continue to expand. According to public health advocacy group Trust for America’s Health, about 24.5 percent of Americans carry enough extra poundage to qualify as “obese.” One effective weapon in the national battle of the bulge seems to be yoga. Researchers have found that people in their 50s who regularly practice yoga lose about five pounds over the course of 10 years, while their non-downward-dogging counterparts gain about 13.5 pounds over the same period. Read about this and other timely topics in my column in Whole Life Times by clicking on the link above.