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(CNSNews.com)-- The School Nutrition Association (SNA), which represents 55,000 school nutritionists nationwide, is pointing to data published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to draw awareness to the fact that “after 30 years of steady growth in the National School Lunch Program, student participation is abruptly down in 49 states."The nutritionists attribute the drop to new nutrition standards that were instituted by USDA in 2012.Total national participation in the School Lunch Program peaked in 2010 and 2011 at 31.8 million, according to USDA. In 2012, it was 31.7 million. But in 2013, it dropped by 1 million participants, to 30.7...

A five day diet which mimics fasting could slow down ageing, add years to life, boost the immune system and cut the risk of heart disease and cancer, scientists believe. The plan which restricts calories to between one third and a half of normal intake has been developed by academics at the University of Southern California. But now they have found that a calorie-restricted diet comprising of vegetable soups and chamomile tea has the same affect. And dieters only need to follow the Fasting Mimicking Diet (FMD) for five days a month, eating what they like for the rest of...

Causes for childhood depression, anxiety and attention deficit range from nutritional imbalances and chemical exposure to home and school problems. Instead of addressing causes, many doctors and psychologists treat the symptoms with powerful medications. Today, almost nine million children, or almost one out of every five American children, take psychoactive drugs for their behavior disorders, many of which are questionable diagnoses. SIDE EFFECTS OF PROZAC Prozac, Luvox, Paxil, and Zoloft belong to a class of drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRI's. These drugs can induce akathisia - mental and physical agitation that sparks self-destructive, violent behavior. They...

Now that trans fats will be off the list of safe additives, any company that wants to use them will have to petition the agency to allow it. That would phase them out almost completely, since not many uses are likely to be allowed. Still, food companies are hoping for some exceptions. The Grocery Manufacturers Association, the main trade group for the food industry, is working with companies on a petition that would formally ask the FDA if it can say there is a "reasonable certainty of no harm" from some specific uses of the fats. A spokesman for the...

<p>SUBSCRIBE NEWSLETTERS FEEDBACK PRIVACY POLICY YOUR CALIFORNIA PRIVACY RIGHTS TERMS OF USE AD CHOICES Ad Choices RSS TIME APPS TIME FOR KIDS ADVERTISING REPRINTS AND PERMISSIONS SITE MAP HELP CUSTOMER SERVICE © 2015 TIME INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.</p> <p>Subway is joining the growing list of companies that plan to drop artificial ingredients from their menu items. The sandwich chain plans to remove artificial flavors, colors and preservatives from its food in North America by 2017, according to the Associated Press.</p>

One of my kids would like me to thank Michelle Obama. She wants me to keep it on the low down and not give any identifying characteristics that may get said kid in trouble so I thought I'd post here. Not that no one reads FR, but I doubt kids school board does! Because Mooch changed the school lunches to basically nothing and had the vending machines stripped to carrot strips that go bad in a day, my kids sports team started selling candy and protein bars on the black market. They raised enough to go to a very prestigious...

In the farm-to-fork-crazed city of Portland, Ore., campus gardens supply public school cafeterias and food service workers seek out chicken free of antibiotics. But the school system's nutritional director finds there's one advocate for healthy food whose demands she just can't meet — Michelle Obama. "We have tried every noodle that is out there," said Gitta Grether-Sweeney, the Portland nutritional director who says she is exasperated by the federal school lunch rules the first lady champions. "Whole-wheat noodles just don't work in lasagna. We are having to go lawless to use regular pasta." The locally sourced macaroni and cheese the...

Brain health is the second most important component in maintaining a healthy lifestyle according to a 2014 AARP study. As people age they can experience a range of cognitive issues from decreased critical thinking to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers write about eight nutrients that may help keep your brain in good shape.

Social scientists have found that by the time children enter kindergarten, there is already a large academic achievement gap between students from wealthy and poor families. We still don't know exactly why that's the case. There's a sense that it at least partly has to do with the fact that affluent mothers and fathers have more intensive parenting sytles—they're more likely to read to their kids, for instance—and have enough money to make sure their toddlers grow up well-nourished, generally cared for, and intellectually stimulated. At the same time, poor children often grow up in chaotic, food-insecure, stressful homes that...

The Food and Drug Administration is tearing into several Kind fruit and nut bars, blasting the company's claims they are healthy.Apparently there is a federal criterion for what is considered healthy, and Kind doesn't meet it, according to a recent FDA warning letter to the company.The agency singled out the labels for four Kind bars: almond and apricot, almond and coconut, peanut butter-dark chocolate and protein, and dark chocolate-cherry cashew and antioxidants.The agency took aim at several claims that the bars were "healthy," including that they were low in sodium and were a good source of fiber.

Scientists Confirm Institute of Medicine Recommendation for Vitamin D Intake Was Miscalculated and Is Far Too Low Released: 17-Mar-2015 10:05 AM EDTSource Newsroom: Creighton University more news from this source Contact InformationAvailable for logged-in reporters onlyCitationsNutrients 2014Newswise — SAN DIEGO, CA (March 16, 2015) - Researchers at UC San Diego and Creighton University have challenged the intake of vitamin D recommended by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Institute of Medicine (IOM), stating that their Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for vitamin D underestimates the need by a factor of ten.In a letter1 published last week in the journal Nutrients...

Apparently, parents should visit the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) website to find out how to teach their children good eating habits.The agency in charge of the country’s agricultural sector is now in the nanny business, thanks to First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative to fight childhood obesity, which links to choosemyplate.gov on its website.In the kids’ section of My Plate, advice is dished out on how parents can help pre-schoolers “develop healthy eating habits,” including a warning about praising an empty plate.“Avoid praising a clean plate,” the website states. “Your child should stop eating when he or she...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is promoting a giant full-body exhibit for kids to walk through to promote healthy eating habits.While encouraging schools to apply for nearly $6 million in grants to help them comply with the First Lady Michelle Obama-promoted Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act new lunch standards, the USDA highlighted efforts by the Kansas State Department of Education.“Body Venture, a traveling health education exhibit sponsored by Kansas State Department of Education travels to schools to teach students about nutrition and physical activity,” the USDA said in a blog post Friday.Body Venture is a 45-foot by 50-foot exhibit that starts...

A middle school teacher in Louisiana received one of the most disgusting-looking lunches imaginable and posted a picture of it online yesterday. The post, titled "I'm a teacher. My school cafeteria served this today," said that the meal below was supposed to be "ham:" Unsurprisingly, the teacher decided not to eat her "meal" and threw the meat away after taking the picture. She also plans on sending the picture to her school's food director "who is supposed to be enforcing federal regulations."

Older adults who drink diet soda may experience greater increases in their waist size over a decade than those who do not drink diet soda, according to a new study. Researchers found that the average increase in waist circumference among the people in the study who drank diet soda daily was more than triple that of the people who did not drink diet soda. Among the people who drank diet soda only occasionally, the increase was more than double that of those who did not drink diet soda. "The more people drank diet sodas, the more their waistlines expanded," said...

The federal government helped finance the creation of a so-called “diet choker” that monitors the eating habits of the wearer.WearSens, created by engineers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), is a necklace that can automatically detect when a person is eating or smoking, and can send alerts to a smart phone telling the user to stop.The invention received a $148,379 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2013 to create a sensory necklace to “fill the need of automatically detecting swallows and eating patterns.”Researchers at UCLA, led by Majid Sarrafzadeh, the director of the Embedded and Reconfigurable...

Meals are good, and snacking is bad. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and if you eat dinner with your family, you will keep your girlish figure and your kids will be healthier. Taking a lunch break will make you succeed at your job. Okay, now forget all that. Because as it turns out, the concept of three square meals a day has practically zero to do with your actual metabolic needs. And our dogmatic adherence to breakfast, lunch, and dinner might actually be making us sick. Historian Abigail Carroll, author of the book Three Squares: The...

Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) is introducing legislation to relax the rules for healthy school lunches. At the School Nutrition Association’s (SNA) 2015 Legislative Action Conference at the JW Marriott Monday, Hoeven announced the Healthy School Meals Flexibility Act to give schools more flexibility in complying with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulations when it comes to whole grains and sodium levels. The bill would allow schools to revert back to 2012 standards, which require at least half of all grains served in school breakfast and school lunch to be whole grain rich. The standard now is for 100 percent...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Michelle Obama said Thursday that the U.S. has undergone a “culture change” in the five years since she started raising awareness about childhood obesity, but as she celebrated achievements on multiple fronts the first lady also warned that the progress is “incredibly fragile.” That’s because special interests “whose first priority is not our kids’ health” are “waiting for us to get complacent or bored and move on to the next trendy issue,” Mrs. Obama said at an annual health summit. She cited the fight over a recent child nutrition law as an example.

Stop chugging sugary soda and munching sweet treats. Cut back on red meats, butter and other sources of saturated fat. Lay off the salt shaker. Eat plenty of fruits and veggies. And don't worry about having an egg and an extra cup of coffee with your breakfast. These are the conclusions of the advisory panel that helps shape America's official dietary guidelines, and they appear to be about the same as they were back in 2010, the last time the guidelines were updated, dietitians say. "What's good about the report is that much of it is reinforcing what we saw...