by Mia Serabian Eating is largely a social activity. Food is at the center of most celebrations, religious gatherings, and cultural activities. Weekends revolve around brunch, birthdays around cake, and holidays like Passover and Easter around Seder plates and colored eggs. Because we often eat with others, what we eat is susceptible to social influence. What does this mean? Generally, it means that we often look to those around us - our eating companions - to determine how much food, or what type of food, is normal and acceptable to eat. This is called social modeling, and its effect on eating behaviors has been proven repeatedly over the past four decades.
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by Holly Gooding, MD, MSc “Will this (any birth control method here) make me gain weight?”
It’s the number one question I get when counseling women about their birth control options, and the number one concern women report in research studies. It’s also a common reason women cite for discontinuing their birth control. But is weight gain related to birth control real? by Renata Smith, MPH In this growing era of ‘wearable tech’, from Google Glass to the forthcoming Apple watch, our lives are increasingly intertwined with technology. What comes along with this every day technology is vast amounts of digital data. The scale is such that terms like exabyte (1 billion gigabytes) exist, and “Big Data” is now a common phrase. Big Data refers not only to the almost incomprehensible amounts of data being generated and stored but also to the ability to extract new insights from this data.
by Wei Perng, PhD As the obesity pandemic rages on, researchers fervently uncover risks that contribute to our growing waistlines - from conventional diet and lifestyle characteristics to more surprising culprits like the air we breathe and the people with whom we hang out. That’s right: our friends can make us gain weight.
by Jenn Woo, MD I have a very fond memory of the lunches I brought to school — turkey or PB&J on whole wheat, an apple, and carrot sticks — even if I was often envious of the kids who ate the fried foods typically served at school. You probably have your own unique memory, and a strong gut reaction, to the phrase “school lunch.”
School nutrition is an emotion-laden topic. Childhood obesity is at an all-time high. A 2008 Institute of Medicine panel found that schoolchildren consumed an excess of more than 500 calories per day from sugar and fat. On school days, children consume almost one-half of their total daily calories at school. Unhealthy school food environments have been linked to a higher risk for obesity. Knowing these facts, how can we give children the opportunity to eat more healthfully at school? |