The Anti-Cancer Shopping List

A healthy diet isn't only a tool to help you lose weight. Eating the right foods in the right combination can actually help prevent disease. This shopping list is your key to health and longevity

 

Dairy	Whole Grains
Jarlsburg cheese	oats
Gouda cheese	flaxseed
Emmenthal cheese	quinoa
soy milk
	Fish/Seafood
Produce	squid
leafy greens like arugula	salmon
brussel sprouts	mackerel
tomatoes	tuna
beets
carrots	Spices & Herbs
sweet potatoes	turmeric
squash	ginger
broccoli	cinnamon
onions, leeks, shallots	rosemary
white button mushrooms	curry
lentils	chive
bell peppers	garlic
spinach	basil
oranges
grapefruit	Nuts/seeds/oils
tangerines	pecans
lemon	walnuts
lime	almonds
apples	hazelnuts
blueberries	flaxseed/flaxseed oil
apricots	olive oil
pomegranates	canola oil
mango
Beverages	Desserts/sweeteners
green tea	dark chocolate
red wine

Supermarket Counseling Could Improve Your Shopping Choices

 

The grocery store can be a confusing place when you are trying to choose healthy foods. Though nearly all foods have a Nutrition Facts label, not everyone knows how to read or interpret the label correctly. Some food packages have health claims printed on them, and some stores provide indicators that certain foods are good for you. But it can get to be a bit confusing unless you have a degree in nutrition.

Researchers at the University of Arizona College of Medicine and Arizona State University set out to determine if providing in-store nutrition counseling could make a difference in the foods shoppers chose. A supermarket chain offered a packaged EatSmart program created by a registered dietitian chosen for the study.

 The foods people purchase are indicative of their dietary intake so education and information can have a long lasting impact on the diets and health of individuals and families.

The program includes colorful nutrition shelf tags placed under items using recommendations from the American Heart Association: "healthier option," "hearthealthy," "calcium rich, "immune booster," or "low sodium." In all, each store had about 600 shelf tags. EatSmart educational materials were also available in the stores.

Shoppers were recruited onsite. Half of the 153 participants shopped using only the store labels and had no other nutrition education. The other half of the shoppers had a 10-minute face-to-face session with a nutrition educator that focused on better understanding of two of the labels, "heart healthy" and "immune booster," before they shopped.

For the purposes of the EatSmart program, "heart healthy" foods include those that are low in total fat, saturated fat, and trans fats. All fruits and vegetables, and particularly the dark green and bright yellow, orange, and red produce, are considered "immune boosters."

After the participants completed their shopping, researchers analyzed each grocery cart to determine the fat content and the amount and color of the fruits and vegetables purchased. Those who received the face-to-face intervention purchased more servings of whole fruit and dark green and bright yellow vegetables compared to the group who received no nutrition education. There was no difference in thefat content of the carts between the two groups.

The foods people purchase are indicative of their dietary intake so education and information can have a long lasting impact on the diets and health of individuals and families. The value of face-to-face nutrition education by a registered dietitian at the point of purchase (the grocery store) may be a service grocery store merchants (or public health officials) should consider offering.

Simple strength training tips

If you’ve never lifted weights in your life — and many people haven’t — why should you start now? The answer is simple: Muscle tissue, bone density, and strength all dwindle over the years. So, too, does muscle power. These changes open the door to accidents and injuries that can compromise your ability to lead an independent, active life. Strength training is the most effective way to slow and possibly reverse much of this decline.

Having smaller, weaker muscles doesn’t just change the way people look or move. Muscle loss affects the body in many ways. Strong muscles pluck oxygen and nutrients from the blood much more efficiently than weak ones. That means any activity requires less cardiac work and puts less strain on your heart. Strong muscles are better at sopping up sugar in the blood and helping the body stay sensitive to insulin (which helps cells remove sugar from the blood). In these ways, strong muscles can help keep blood sugar levels in check, which in turn helps prevent or control type 2 diabetes and is good for the heart. Strong muscles also enhance weight control.

On the other hand, weak muscles hasten the loss of independence as everyday activities — such as walking, cleaning, shopping, and even dressing — become more difficult. They also make it harder to balance your body properly when moving or even standing still, or to catch yourself if you trip. The loss of power compounds this. Perhaps it’s not so surprising that, by age 65, one in three people reports falls. Because bones also weaken over time, one out of every 20 of these falls ends in fracture, usually of the hip, wrist, or leg. The good news is that the risk of these problems can be reduced by an exercise and fitness routine that includes strength training.

Beginner’s simple strength boosting exercises

A sturdy chair with armrests and athletic shoes with non-skid soles are all you need for these simple strength building exercises. 

Seated bridge

 

Sit slightly forward in a chair with your hands on the armrests. Your feet should be flat on the floor and slightly apart, and your upper body should be upright (don’t lean forward). Using your arms for balance only, slowly raise your buttocks off the chair until nearly standing with your knees bent. Pause. Slowly sit back down. Aim for 8–12 repetitions. Rest and repeat the set.

Triceps dip

Put a chair with armrests up against a wall. Sit in the chair and put your feet together flat on the floor. Lean forward a bit while keeping your shoulders and back straight. Bend your elbows and place your hands on the armrests of the chair, so they are in line with your torso. Pressing downward on your hands, try to lift yourself up a few inches by straightening out your arms. Raise your upper body and thighs, but keep your feet in contact with the floor. Pause. Slowly release until you’re sitting back down again. Aim for 8–12 repetitions. Rest and repeat the set.

Standing calf raise

 

Stand with your feet flat on the floor. Hold onto the back of your chair for balance. Raise yourself up on tiptoe, as high as possible. Hold briefly, then lower yourself. Aim for 8–12 repetitions. Rest and repeat the set.

Specific vitamins and minerals as you age

high levels of specific vitamins and minerals can decrease the risk of developing AMD and many other age-related illnesses.

These vitamins and minerals include:

• Zinc

• Antioxidants
• Omega-3 Fatty Acids

• Beta Carotene

• Lutein/Zeaxanthin

Zinc is an essential mineral that is naturally present in foods like:

• Oysters
• Beef
• Crab
• Lobster
• Pork
• Milk
• Chicken
• Baked beans

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Antioxidants play a vital role in preventing diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer's disease and macular degeneration.  They are found naturally in foods like:

• Berries
• Beans
• Artichokes
• Spinach
• Red cabbage
• Sweet Potatoes
• Green Tea
• Broccoli
• Red Wine

Omega-3 Fatty Acids can benefit the cardiovascular system, particularily among people with coronary artery diseases.  They are found naturally in foods like:

• Fatty Fish (salmon, tuna)
• Soybean oil
• Canola oil
• Flaxseed oil
• Walnuts
• Brussels sprouts
• Kale
• Spinach

Beta carotene play an important role in healthy vision, bone growth and immune system health.  They are found naturally in foods like:

• Carrots
• Spinach
• Kale

• Vegetable Soup

• Cantaloupe

• Apricots

• Mango
• Red Peppers

Lutein/Zeaxanthin is an essential nutrient that can help stave off macular degeneration and other age-related diseases.  It is found naturally in these foods:

• Egg Yolks

• Maize

• Kiwi fruit
• Grapes
• Spinach
• Orange juice
• Zucchini

• Orange Peppers

• Squash

Friend groups may encourage kids to be more active

(Reuters Health) - Kids in after-school programs often increase their own physical activity if they make friends who run and jump around more than they do, a new study from Tennessee has found.

Though not completely surprising, that finding could be important as parents, after-school teachers and camp counselors try to encourage youngsters to move more and head-off obesity before it starts, researchers said.

The results are also in line with research that's been done in teens and adults, who tend to look like the rest of their friend group in terms of weight and fitness level.

"This is more evidence that peers and social networks do influence health behaviors," said Dr. Pooja Tandon, a childhood obesity researcher from the University of Washington in Seattle who wasn't involved in the new study.

"The next steps will be (understanding) how to harness the power of social networks to promote health behaviors," such as physical activity in kids, she told Reuters Health.

Researchers from Vanderbilt University in Nashville studied 81 racially-diverse public school students, ages five to 12, who went to after-school programs at one of two different sites.

To see how the kids' friendships affected their physical activity -- and vice versa -- pediatrics researcher Sabina Gesell and her colleagues spent time with the students during three week-long periods over the spring of 2010.

During each visit, they asked kids individually who they were friends with in the after-school program. Then, Gesell's team outfitted the youngsters with accelerometers -- small devices that clip on to the belt and measure how active people are at any given time.

Based on accelerometer readings, the students spent an average of 30 percent of their free time at after-school in what the researchers counted as moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, including running around or playing active games.

Over the course of the study, Gesell and her colleagues found, kids didn't make or break friendships based on how active they were compared to other students. For example, those who spent most of after-school running around were equally likely to befriend their active or non-active peers.

Instead, when kids made new friends who were more or less active, they tended to change their own activity level accordingly, the researchers reported Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

"Kids are constantly adjusting their activity levels to match their friends," Gesell told Reuters Health.

That finding starts to hint at possible ways to address evidence that kids are spending more time on the couch and less time running around than in the past -- and becoming overweight and obese as a result.

"If (counselors) can basically use different strategies to encourage activity even in some children, that could have a ripple effect," said Tandon, who also wondered if similar techniques to promote exercise would work during school recess or at home.

Of course, friends in the study didn't always have a positive influence.

"Some kids' activity levels got pulled up by their immediate friends, and others got pulled down," Gesell told Reuters Health.

The question now, she said, is how to "leverage" that finding to encourage less-active kids to get more exercise, and not the other way around.

The research is still a few steps away from leading to changes in how after-school programs are run in the real world, Gesell said. But in the future, counselors could shake up sedentary friend groups and encourage a couple of less-active kids to join those that go straight to the gym or the playground, she added.

"The after-school programs have had this long history of keeping kids safe and keeping them off the street," Gesell said. "Now the thought is, what if we use this ideal arena to improve health?"

Flavonoids: Antioxidant Activity and Health Benefits

Flavonoids are polyphenols abundantly found in fruits, vegetables, and herbs (eg. tea, ginger root). Flavonoids are synthesized only in plants. They are a diverse group of phytochemicals, exceeding four thousand in number. From human nutrition perspective, flavonoids are important components of a healthy diet because of their antioxidant activity. Nevertheless, the antioxidant potency and specific effect of flavonoids in promoting human health varies depending on the flavonoid type (chemical, physical, and structural properties). Among the potent antioxidant flavonoid types are quercetin, catechins and xanthohumol. Flavonoid science is a research area rapidly gaining deeper insight on the health benefit and chemical property of flavonoids.

Flavonoids and Their Food Sources

Example of dietary flavonoid sources include:

Tea: Green, white or black tea are a rich source of flavonoids, especially flavonols (catechin, epicatechin, epigallocatechin, epicatechin gallate). Tea is a good source of quecertin.

Onions: The major flavonoid in onions is quercetin. Other flavonoids in onion are kaempferol and myricertin.

Honey: Depending on the flower type the bees feed on, honey contains myricertin, and quercetin.

Other dietary flavonoid sources are beans, spinach, buckwheat, strawberry,blueberry, rooibos plant. The concentration and composition of flavonoids in plants may vary depending on the growing condition, maturity, plant part, and variety.

Health Benefits of Flavonoids

Beneficial effects of flavonoids on human health are partly explained by their antioxidant activity. Because of the antioxidative property, it is suggested that flavonoids may delay or prevent the onset of diseases (such as cancer) induced by free radicals. They also inhibit low density lipoprotein (LDL) oxidation by free radicals. Flavonoids have been reported to have negative correlation with incidence of coronary heart disease. Furthermore, flavonoids have anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-tumor, anti-inflammatory, antiallergenic, and vasodilatory effect. They also inhibit platelet aggregation

How to Make Kids Eat the Vegetables They Hate

Most children are physiologically predisposed to dislike bitter vegetables. New research shows how to get them to eat veggies anyway.

PROBLEM: When it comes to food, children are pretty easy to please. Unlike health-conscious grown-ups who care about nutrition or foodies who factor in points for presentation, all most kids care about when they eat is flavor. Sweet is good; bitter is very, very bad. So how can parents, who've overcome the genetic predisposition against tart-tasting food that afflicts about 70 percent of us, compel kids to eat the healthful veggies they've been programmed to hate?

METHODOLOGY: For seven weeks, Temple University obesity researcher Jennifer Orlet Fisher served broccoli at snack time to 152 preschool-aged children and analyzed the effect of offering them various dips.

RESULTS: Adding 2.5 ounces of ranch dressing to a serving of vegetables helped bitter-sensitive children eat 80 percent more broccoli. Low-fat and regular versions of the dip were equally effective.

CONCLUSION: Low-fat dips can help children accept bitter food like broccoli or Brussels sprouts. Though ranch dressing was used in the experiment, Fisher notes in a statement that applesauce, hummus, or a yogurt-based dip can work as well.

SOURCE: The full study, "Offering 'Dip' Promotes Intake of a Moderately-Liked Raw Vegetable Among Preschoolers With Genetic Sensitivity to Bitterness," is published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.

High-fructose corn syrup alters learning, memory

High-fructose corn syrup can interfere with learning and memory, according to a new study published on Tuesday, AFP reported.

Gomez-Pinilla said, "Eating a high-fructose diet over the long term alters your brain's ability to learn and remember information. But adding omega-3 fatty acids to your meals can help minimize the damage,"according to LiveScience.

High-fructose corn syrup is six times sweeter than cane sugar and commonly added to soda, processed foods, condiments and baby good, said LiveScience.

The US Department of Agriculture said the average American consumes more than 40 pounds of high-fructose corn syrup per year.

The researchers found that the rats fed only high-fructose corn syrup developed insulin resistance, which they think may be interfering with the cells' ability to use and store sugar.

Science Daily noted that high-fructose corn syrup has also been connected to diabetes, obesity and fatty liver.

Gomez-Pinilla said, "Our study shows that a high-fructose diet harms the brain as well as the body. This is something new."

A Mathematical Challenge to Obesity

By CLAUDIA DREIFUS

Carson C. Chow deploys mathematics to solve the everyday problems of real life. As an investigator at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, he tries to figure out why 1 in 3 Americans are obese.

We spoke at the recent annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where Dr. Chow, 49, gave a presentation on “Illuminating the Obesity Epidemic With Mathematics,” and then later by telephone; a condensed and edited version of the interviews follows.

You are an M.I.T.-trained mathematician and physicist. How did you come to work on obesity?

In 2004, while on the faculty of the math department at the University of Pittsburgh, I married. My wife is a Johns Hopkins ophthalmologist, and she would not move. So I began looking for work in the Beltway area. Through the grapevine, I heard that the N.I.D.D.K., a branch of the National Institutes of Health, was building up its mathematics laboratory to study obesity. At the time, I knew almost nothing of obesity.

I didn’t even know what a calorie was. I quickly read every scientific paper I could get my hands on.

I could see the facts on the epidemic were quite astounding. Between 1975 and 2005, the average weight of Americans had increased by about 20 pounds. Since the 1970s, the national obesity rate had jumped from around 20 percent to over 30 percent.

The interesting question posed to me when I was hired was, “Why is this happening?”

Why would mathematics have the answer?

Because to do this experimentally would take years. You could find out much more quickly if you did the math.

Now, prior to my coming on staff, the institute had hired a mathematical physiologist, Kevin Hall. Kevin developed a model that could predict how your body composition changed in response to what you ate. He created a math model of a human being and then plugged in all the variables — height, weight, food intake, exercise. The model could predict what a person will weigh, given their body size and what they take in.

However, the model was complicated: hundreds of equations. Kevin and I began working together to boil it down to one simple equation. That’s what applied mathematicians do. We make things simple. Once we had it, the slimmed-down equation proved to be a useful platform for answering a host of questions.

What new information did your equation render?

That the conventional wisdom of 3,500 calories less is what it takes to lose a pound of weight is wrong. The body changes as you lose. Interestingly, we also found that the fatter you get, the easier it is to gain weight. An extra 10 calories a day puts more weight onto an obese person than on a thinner one.

Also, there’s a time constant that’s an important factor in weight loss. That’s because if you reduce your caloric intake, after a while, your body reaches equilibrium. It actually takes about three years for a dieter to reach their new “steady state.” Our model predicts that if you eat 100 calories fewer a day, in three years you will, on average, lose 10 pounds — if you don’t cheat.

Another finding: Huge variations in your daily food intake will not cause variations in weight, as long as your average food intake over a year is about the same. This is because a person’s body will respond slowly to the food intake.

Did you ever solve the question posed to you when you were first hired — what caused the obesity epidemic?

We think so. And it’s something very simple, very obvious, something that few want to hear: The epidemic was caused by the overproduction of food in the United States.

Beginning in the 1970s, there was a change in national agricultural policy. Instead of the government paying farmers not to engage in full production, as was the practice, they were encouraged to grow as much food as they could. At the same time, technological changes and the “green revolution” made our farms much more productive. The price of food plummeted, while the number of calories available to the average American grew by about 1,000 a day.

Well, what do people do when there is extra food around? They eat it! This, of course, is a tremendously controversial idea. However, the model shows that increase in food more than explains the increase in weight.

In the 1950s, when I was growing up, people rarely ate out. Today, Americans dine out — with these large restaurant portions and oil-saturated foods — about five times a week.

Right. Society has changed a lot. With such a huge food supply, food marketing got better and restaurants got cheaper. The low cost of food fueled the growth of the fast-food industry. If food were expensive, you couldn’t have fast food.

People think that the epidemic has to be caused by genetics or that physical activity has gone down. Yet levels of physical activity have not really changed in the past 30 years. As for the genetic argument, yes, there are people who are genetically disposed to obesity, but if they live in societies where there isn’t a lot of food, they don’t get obese. For them, and for us, it’s supply that’s the issue.

Interestingly, we saw that Americans are wasting food at a progressively increasing rate. If Americans were to eat all the food that’s available, we’d be even more obese.

Any practical advice from your number crunching?

One of the things the numbers have shown us is that weight change, up or down, takes a very, very long time. All diets work. But the reaction time is really slow: on the order of a year.

People don’t wait long enough to see what they are going to stabilize at. So if you drop weight and return to your old eating habits, the time it takes to crawl back to your old weight is something like three years. To help people understand this better, we’ve posted an interactive version of our model at bwsimulator.niddk.nih.gov. People can plug in their information and learn how much they’ll need to reduce their intake and increase their activity to lose. It will also give them a rough sense of how much time it will take to reach the goal. Applied mathematics in action!

What can Americans do to stem the obesity epidemic?

One thing I have concluded, and this is just a personal view, is that we should stop marketing food to children. I think childhood obesity is a major problem. And when you’re obese, it’s not like we can suddenly cut your food off and you’ll go back to not being obese. You’ve been programmed to eat more. It’s a hardship to eat less. Michelle Obama’s initiative is helpful. And childhood obesity rates seem to be stabilizing in the developed world, at least. The obesity epidemic may have peaked because of the recession. It’s made food more expensive.

You said earlier that nobody wants to hear your message. Why?

I think the food industry doesn’t want to know it. And ordinary people don’t particularly want to hear this, either. It’s so easy for someone to go out and eat 6,000 calories a day. There’s no magic bullet on this. You simply have to cut calories and be vigilant for the rest of your life.

Table Talk: The New Family Dinner

GROWING up in the ’70s, I sat down to a family dinner that was consistent with my parents’ child-rearing philosophy at the time, which my mother likes to call “benign neglect.” Over dinner, my father briefed my mother on the ins and outs of his day at the office, while my siblings and I zoned out or piped up or fought over why my older sister always got the corner seat. We sat down as a family to a good, healthy meal, but dinner was not what you would call child-centric — which was fine with us, and definitely fine with them.    

Dinner with our closest family friends, at whose home I stayed when my parents traveled, veered in a different direction altogether. After an elegant, home-cooked dinner, the father of the family’s three boys would put down his fork, address one of his sons by name, and start talking about trains, planes or automobiles — one was going so many miles an hour, while another, moving at a different rate, was leaving from a different coast. When would they meet up? The boys all found these oral math games entertaining, and so did I, until the father posed one of those questions to me, at which point my mind went blank for one long minute before I finally burst into tears.

Because of the cultural whiplash I experienced in regularly attending two remarkably different family meals, I have always been fascinated by the range of conversations that pass for normal at other people’s homes at mealtime: what rituals and rules of discourse do parents invent, to what conventions do they default or aspire?

Franklin Foer, editor at large for The New Republic and the brother of the writers Jonathan Safran Foer and Joshua Foer, recalls his childhood meals as freewheeling affairs where the only rule was that everyone show up. “We were never asked, ‘What did you do today?’ ” Franklin Foer said. His father, a lawyer who served on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union, led his children in debates about economic policy and civil rights issues, but with an open ear: a conversation about Reagan’s Star Wars policies might lead to a discussion about “why we couldn’t build a giant shield over the United States out of Legos,” Mr. Foer said, recalling also that “scatological humor was encouraged at our dinner table.”

If the Foer family dinner sounds like the South Park version of what the Kennedy families once did — expecting children to come to meals prepared to discuss current events — the Emanuel family sounds more like the Fight Club version of the same. Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago; Ari Emanuel, a Hollywood agent; and Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist, came to dinner, at their mother’s insistence, ready to discuss the issues of the day; Rahm Emanuel has described the ensuing debates as “gladiatorial.”

But Ezekiel Emanuel, now a professor and vice provost at the University of Pennsylvania, clarified that things never actually became violent. “Lots of screaming but no fistfights,” he said.

The emphasis at his own family’s meals, which he and his now ex-wife shared with their children at breakfast and dinner, was less about preparation for public life and more of an opportunity for family members to tune into one another’s affairs. “We’d go around the table, and everyone reported how their day went,” said Mr. Emanuel, whose youngest is now 21. Meals started with a Jewish blessing; as for formal discussions of politics, “We were not stilted,” he said. Nor were they fighting furiously: “We had three girls,” he explained. “It’s different.”

Aiming high for mealtime conversation can be a family tradition — or a way of giving children something the parents wished they themselves had had. When Howard Gordon, the co-creator of “Homeland,” was growing up, “dinner tended to be quick and not one that emphasized conversation,” he said. With his own family, he hoped for more, which proved a challenge.

“It wasn’t as easy as just legislating that every dinner was going to be meaningful,” said Mr. Gordon, whose oldest son is now 18 and in college, and whose other children are 15 and 7. He has tried to introduce serious subjects of debate, ideas about the redistribution of wealth or taxation, into conversation. “More often than not, my kids were like, ‘Oh, God, do we have to do this?’ ” he said. “My attempts at meaning were transparent, and failed sometimes. But with a little elbow grease, if you picked the right subject, something would happen.”

Amy Chua, the Yale Law professor who wrote “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” the controversial chronicle of her own overambitious parenting technique, said her immigrant parents imparted to her a passion for academics — but not over dinner. “We did not say one word,” she recalled. Eating and television news dominated the meal.

In her own home, she said, she and her husband, the law professor Jed Rubenfeld, try to devote about half the meal to catching up on their children’s lives and the other half to “bringing up interesting cases with moral dilemmas.” (Example: If one of us committed a crime, would you turn us in?) “I felt like, let’s not just gossip about stupid stuff,” Ms. Chua said. “I wanted them to be more cultured and have deeper thoughts.”

Such ambitions are not the purview of tiger mothers alone. Actually getting the meal on the table and coordinating overbooked schedules is enough of a struggle that when family dinner does happen, a parent could be forgiven for having high expectations — a moment of connection, at last, that justifies the effort.

“A big part of the challenge is teaching your kids how to have a real conversation, not a texting conversation,” said Laurie David, a producer of “An Inconvenient Truth,” who has since devoted her considerable advocacy skills to encouraging more stimulating mealtimes. “If they’re not sitting down at the table, the art of conversation is going to go.”

Ms. David’s 2010 book, “The Family Dinner,” includes almost as many discussion starting points as it does recipes, and she now posts regular topics of conversation on The Huffington Post, under the rubric “Table Talk.” (A recent example, inspired by Jeremy Lin: Why do we love an underdog? Have you ever been an underdog?)

What Jacqueline Kennedy did for the triple strand of pearls, the Obama family has done for the thorn and the rose, a mealtime ritual, simple and fail-safe, in which each family member talks about his or her low and high point of the day.

But the tradition has been around for longer than the Obamas have been in office. Cynthia McFadden, a co-anchor of “Nightline,” said she was inspired by a dinnertime scene in the 1998 film “Stepmom” that featured a family talking about their high and low points for the day. She has been asking her now-13-year-old son to do the same since he could speak, and sharing hers, too.

“I think it’s really powerful for kids to hear their parents say, ‘I had a fight with my boss and had to go to my bathroom to cry,’ ” Ms. McFadden said. “It really gives kids at the table permission to talk about the things they’re struggling with.”

Like so many other families who have followed the Obama example, my husband and I pose the nightly question to our own 5-year-old twins. I like to think of it as a ritual that is more child-friendly than child-centric: As often as not, I learn something about my husband’s day he might not otherwise have mentioned.

I can’t quite imagine my family, circa 1977, doing the same. It would have felt contrived, like some sitcom-y gloss on the reality of our modern lives. Maybe that was an era when anything that reeked of so much wholesome good cheer felt faintly suspect. These days, I am grateful for anything that imposes some order on the chaos of mealtime (and a break from the usual topics of conversation, the evils of chair-wriggling and nose-picking).

That need for structure, any structure, may also have been less pressing to my parents’ generation, who seemed, so often, to have a firmer grip on discipline, using mysterious techniques now lost to posterity.

Franklin Foer said his own family, too, has been known to incorporate the thorn and the rose in their family dinner. But he is lukewarm on this particular Obama policy.

“To me, it always feels forced,” said Mr. Foer, whose children are 4 and 7. “What I learned from my mom and dad was that you can go to the big subjects and engage kids more — my kids are so much more fascinated by World War II than trying to summarize what happened to them that day.”

He also finds a way to bring old family traditions directly to his dinner table, he said. When his children ask him a question he can’t answer, Mr. Foer calls his father on the phone. Then he puts him on speaker, in the middle of the table, expanding the boundaries of family dinner to include the past.

The dinner conversation continues.        

Jog 15 Minutes a Day, Extend Your Life by 5 Years or More

Researchers in Copenhagen compared joggers and non-joggers from a preexisting database of over 20,000 men and women ranging from 20 years old to 93. They found that an hour to two-and-a-half hours of jogging per week was linked to an increase in life expectancy among men by 6.2 years, and among women by 5.6 years.
Over the course of 35 years, the risk of death fell by 44 percent among joggers of both sexes. And more strenuous activity didn't necessarily result in greater benefits, either.
"The relationship appears much like alcohol intake," said Peter Schnor, chief cardiologist of the Copenhagen City Heart Study. "Mortality is lower in people reporting moderate jogging, than in non-joggers or those undertaking extreme levels of exercise."
According to the study, breaking your runs into two or three chunks over the course of the week appears to yield the best results. Don't worry about going fast, or exhausting yourself, said the researchers. It's enough to feel just a little short of breath.

Omega-3 may curb memory loss, study says

People who eat a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids may significantly lower their risk of developing memory problems and Alzheimer’s disease, a new study has found.

Researchers recruited 1,219 people over age 65, and followed their dietary habits for more than a year.  Then they tested the subjects' blood for a protein called beta-amyloid, a protein is associated with memory problems and Alzheimer’s disease. In fact, plaques and tangles which are found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients are actually clumps of this substance.

“We know that the amyloid mechanisms are out of control in a person with Alzeimer’s disease,” said the study's lead author, Dr. Nikolaos Scarmeas, associate professor of clinical neurology at New York's Columbia University Medical Center.
“We wanted to see if different nutrients influenced those levels.”
Interestingly, the people in the study who consumed omega-3 had significantly lower levels of amyloid in their blood.
The effects are continuous researchers say.  The levels decreased by 20-to 30% for each gram of omega-3 fatty acid added to their diet.  One gram is equivalent to a handful of walnuts, or half a piece of salmon.
“The more you eat, the lower the amyloid level will be,” said Scarmeas.
The study – published in the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology - also evaluated beta-carotene, vitamin D, vitamin B12, vitamin E, omega-6, saturated fatty acids, and non-unsaturated fatty acids in the participants diets.
Omega-3 was the only nutrient that showed an association with lower amyloid levels.
A 2010 study found that people who ate food high in omega-3 acids had a nearly 40% lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s compared to people who didn’t.  However, the reason why couldn’t be determined.  Researchers believe this new study may help explain the connection.
Foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids are often the crux of a Mediterranean diet. Choose fatty fish like mackerel, trout, herring, tuna or salmon.  Non-fish options include kale, tofu, soybeans, walnuts and flaxseed.
Although it is best to get nutrients from natural resources, omega-3 supplements can also be effective.  Consult with your doctor before adding fish oil supplements to your diet because they may interact with other medications