Free Republic

Students across the United States are getting a taste of progressivism. And it doesn’t seem to please their palates. The implementation of Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity lunch standards is encountering backlash from students and school administrators across the country. The program seems to have taught them a valuable lesson in the realities of progressivism -- that when American voters give up power to busy-body progressives, the result is more control over their lives and the loss of individual liberties. They responded to this newfound reality with boycotts, social media angst, and filled trash cans instead of filled bellies.According to the Government...

A new project from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is using computer simulated training sessions to teach doctors in Minnesota how to talk to fat kids.The nearly $500,000 study using “virtual role play” to coach doctors is the latest attempt by the federal government to combat obesity.“Obesity in the United States is at historically high levels and is an important health problem,” the grant for the project states. “Interventions targeting children are a high priority because children bear the greatest lifetime health risk from overweight and obesity.”“Health professionals in primary care settings are influential in the lives of families,”...

The CDC released early estimates of the influenza vaccine effectiveness (VE) today. Many of us saw the report circulating that the VE was 23% overall. But if you happen to be 18-49 years old, it’s only 12%.

Miami (AFP) - This US winter season's flu vaccine has been just 23 percent effective at preventing doctor visits for people of all ages, according to health authorities' early estimates out Thursday....The flu vaccine is generally most effective in young, healthy people under 65.This season, vaccine effectiveness has been highest -- 26 percent -- in those aged six months through 17 years.Vaccine effectiveness wa s just 12 percent for ages 18 to 49 years and 14 percent for people age 50 years and older, the CDC said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is proposing strict new dietary guidelines for day cares that would prohibit them from frying food that is served to children.Child care providers would also be formally required to provide children with water upon request, though they would face restrictions on how much apple juice and orange juice they serve.The proposed nutrition standards are intended to promote the "health and wellness of children" at day cares that participate in government-funded meal programs, the USDA's Food and Nutrition Service said Wednesday.One of the more notable provisions would restrict day cares from frying food on site...

Kevin Loria January 13, 2015Humanity is close to eradicating a human disease from the face of the earth for the second time in history. (The first eradicated human disease was smallpox, which last infected someone in 1977.) That's pretty incredible — but it's a project that has required close to three decades of work, and it isn't finished. On Monday, former US President Jimmy Carter announced at the opening of "Countdown to Zero: Defeating Disease," a new exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, that there were just 126 cases of Guinea worm disease left in the world. In...

Rep. Dan Nordberg, the author of last year’s audit bill, had this to say in a statement: “With only a limited performance audit, the state auditor found Connect for Health Colorado committed numerous federal law violations, and nearly 40 percent of sampled contracts had problems totaling more than $32 million dollars. “Sadly, I am not surprised. I have had ongoing concerns about how Connect for Health Colorado was managing tax payers’ funds, which is why I pushed so hard last year to expand the auditor’s oversight of this organization. I hope Democrats will see the light and support my efforts...

If two out of three adults are considered to be overweight in America, it is no surprise that losing weight tops New Year’s resolutions every year. Regardless of age, race, or gender, the battle of the bulge unites many of us. Heck, I even hired a personal trainer since I can’t get it together on my own. And while most of us will abandon our nutrition and exercise routines before January is over, there is a man whose dedication to health in 2015 could make all the difference in the 2016 elections. His name is Chris Christie, governor of New...

This from one column on Drudge today: SICK: Health Officials Warn of Legionnaire's Disease Outbreak in NYC... Unraveling Key to Cold Virus's Effectiveness... Harsh Respiratory Virus Slams Colorado... 26 children dead as flu outbreak widens... UPDATE: 5 New Measles Cases Reported With Ties to DISNEYLAND...

Alzheimer's could be prevented and even cured by boosting the brain's own immune response, scientists at Stanford University believe. Researchers discovered that nerve cells die because cells which are supposed to clear the brain of bacteria, viruses and dangerous deposits, stop working. These cells, called 'microglia' function well when people are young, but when they age, a single protein called EP2 stops them operating efficiently. Now scientists have shown that blocking the protein allows the microglia to function normally again so they can hoover up the dangerous sticky amyloid-beta plaques which damage nerve cells in Alzheimer's disease. The researchers found...

"Healthy obese adults show a greater risk for developing cardiovascular disease than healthy normal-weight adults, although this risk is not as great as for the unhealthy obese. Healthy obesity is only a state of relative health - it's just less unhealthy than the worst-case scenario. And as we now see, healthy obese adults tend to become unhealthy obese over time, providing further evidence against the idea that obesity can be healthy," said Bell. ... "Healthy obesity is only valid if it is stable over time, and our results indicate that it is often just a phase. All types of obesity...

You may remember my earlier thread from last week. My Uncle Billy has died in the last hour.

ROGERS, Ark. – The garbage cans are becoming morbidly obese at Rogers High School.“We’re feeding trash cans a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables,” Robin Kinder, president of the Arkansas School Nutrition Association and assistant child nutrition director for Springdale Public Schools, tells NWAonline.com.In addition to changing the lunch menu to make it “healthier,” the school sends students back into the line if they fail to take the required fruits and vegetables mandated by the overhaul of the National School Lunch Program.“It would just go straight to the trash sometimes,” Estefany Corleto, a junior at Rogers High School, says of...

The discovery of a new virus implicated in the death of a Kansas farmer this past June raises many questions about its host, prevalence, spectrum of disease, and ultimately its treatment and prevention, according to an infectious disease expert who treated the patient. Yesterday, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment announced the first known case of the so-called Bourbon virus, named after the Kansas county where the unidentified patient had lived. His symptoms — fever, low red and white blood cell counts, elevated liver enzymes, and loss of appetite — suggested a tick-borne illness such as ehrlichiosis or the...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has issued an order that millions of Americans will likely find impossible to carry out: stop eating raw cookie dough. “Avoid raw or partially cooked eggs or foods containing raw eggs, such as cookie dough,” USDA advised in an email over the weekend. cookie1 Carrying out that simple 15-word recommendation would radically change millions of lives, from families who routinely bake cookies and invite the kids to scoop batter out of the bowl, to people who scarf down pre-packaged cookie dough, to everyone who eats cookie dough found in ice cream. Simply put, it’s not...

If you like your health care plan, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has a Christmas surprise for you! When will this new present arrive? December 25th. In an ongoing effort to keep Obamacare numbers elevated, CMS has embarked on the next step of its government takeover of healthcare. It seems CMS is taking a page from Jonathan Gruber’s book; rather than allowing the “stupid” masses to make a decision on their own health plan, CMS has proposed a new rule that includes an overly reaching provision allowing CMS to re-enroll anyone who has not made the annual...

Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin on Wednesday dropped his plan to enact a single-payer health care system in his state — a plan that had won praise from liberals but never really got much past the framework stage. “This is not the right time” for enacting single payer, Shumlin said in a statement, citing the big tax increases that would be required to pay for it.

The most common misconception among doctors, dieticians and personal trainers is that the missing mass has been converted into energy or heat. "There is surprising ignorance and confusion about the metabolic process of weight loss," says Professor Andrew Brown, head of the UNSW School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences. "The correct answer is that most of the mass is breathed out as carbon dioxide. It goes into thin air," says the study's lead author, Ruben Meerman, a physicist and Australian TV science presenter. ------------------- The second most frequently asked question is whether weight loss can cause global warming.

Can those of you who are using Christian Health Ministries rather than traditional health care insurance please explain how it works and if you are happy with it? Have you ever been hospitalized during the time you were covered and how did it work?

In the span of four months, at least 94 children in 33 U.S. states have developed a devastating form of paralysis with symptoms similar to polio. Some require a ventilator to breathe. And some of the greatest government health minds in the country say they have no idea what’s causing it. At the same time, during the past four months, at least 12 children have died after falling ill with a respiratory virus called Enterovirus D-68 (EV-D68). Again, federal health officials are at a loss to explain the origin of the epidemic. Are the mysterious outbreaks linked? The Centers for...