A really great new concept has come out to help keep us senior folk a little bit fitter and a bit sharper upstairs. Now, I know not everybody has the time or energy to drag their buttocks to the gym a few times a week, but I’ve just read about a nifty little gizmo that helps you get fit by keeping track of exercise challenges you set for yourself.

The games encourage small lifestyle changes and are completely customizable. Basically, this new program works with your Palm Pilot or some other fancy-dancy PDA your son bought you (that you only use for the tip calculator). Have a look at this press release over at medicalnewstoday. It gives you most of the details, but because I’m a nice guy, I’ll save you the trouble and just explain it here.

The technology was developed by a research team at the University of Houston (a fine institution if I do say so myself, go cougars!). Essentially, you wear a small monitoring device during the course of your day and it tracks walking, running, bending over and even little things like toe-tapping. The fancy doctor name for all of this is Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. Your movements over the course of the day make a video game character on your PDA perform specific functions and you can compete against your friends as well.

To be honest, I think a lot of seniors would really get a kick out of something like this. Imagine playing a game of golf, but simultaneously having a race to see who could actually walk the furthest while they played? Probably me because my ball spends more time under water than many species of fish. What I really think this would be great for though is ending this chorus of fat children I see every time I leave  my condo. What do they feed children today? Honestly, when you go to a restaurant and you see a parent order food for their kid and they order more food for the child than they do for themselves; does it not occur to you that there’s a huge problem. How has somebody not mentioned that yet? Children are too fat these days. Too much pie. Too much v’deo games.

Maybe the way to get kids to start exercising these days is to incorporate video games into their exercise routine. Maybe thats what it is going to take. Well, I tell you what, this is something I would use and something I could give to that grandson of mine who really needs a sharp kick in the behind if you ask me. Listening to that rap music and such. I guess if it takes video games to make him exercise, that’s what its gonna be. I bet I’d still walk further in a day than him, that’s for sure.

Country-pop radio stalwart Kim Mitchell likes to say “might as well go for a soda, nobody hurts” well, I’ve got two things to say to Mr. Mitchell-first off- get a boys name. Secondly, if that soda’s diet and you’re going for one every day- you may as well be going for a Big Mac.

We all know that regular soda is no good for you. However, the rise of diet soda was built on the promise of low calories and less sugar (or a different type of sugar) and you would be led to believe that while drinking diet soda wasn’t exactly healthy, it wasn’t nearly as damaging as drinking the occasional bottle of traditional soda.

The Circulation Journal has published the findings of a study titled “Soft Drink Consumption and

Risk of Developing Cardiometabolic Risk Factors and the Metabolic Syndrome in Middle-Aged Adults.” A veritable slew of health blogs have been discussing the results and it looks very clear that diet soda is a big sham.

Discussing the study, the GetFitSource Blog stated ““People who drank one or more diet sodas each day developed the same risks for heart disease as those who downed sugary regular soda.” The person who wrote the post was seemingly furious over the blatant false advertising indicated by the addition of a “diet” label to the name. There is nothing that’s diet at all about these drinks.

“Needless to say this is somewhat of a surprising result since it’s definitely counter intuitive that the diet colas would have the same impact as fully sweetened sodas given the massive calories contained in the latter. Not surprisingly, a representative from the American Beverage Association opined: “How can something with zero calories that’s 99 percent water with a little flavoring in it … cause weight gain?”

The study also concluded that individuals who “drank one or more sodas a day diet or regular had an increased risk of metabolic syndrome, compared to those who drank sodas infrequently.” In terms of your heart health- diet sodas are conclusively as bad as traditional sodas.

The CardioBlog noted that this increase in Metabolic Syndrome translated into another troubling symptom- obsesity. Their latest post on this study noted that “What’s more, compared to those who drank less than one soda a day, those who drank one or more were at a 30% greater risk becoming obese and had a 25% greater chance of developing high cholesterol.”

The Disease Proof Blog was also incensed about the hurtful effects of diet soda. Joel Fuhrman M.D, the writer of the post, seemed to imply that the use of artificial sweetener was responsible for the bulk of the damage. He quoted a recent post in another medical blog that said…

“Despite its widespread use, there is a surprising lack of human clinical trials evaluating its safety. Unlike with saccharin, no evidence has been reported that stevioside and its metabolites are carcinogenic. However, animal reports of nephrotoxicity do exist.”

Are the carcinogenic effects of artificial sweeteners baring unknown repercussions on millions of American hearts? The signs are increasingly pointing to yes.

A recent study from the good folks at the New England Journal of Medicine has revealed that the spread of obesity functions much like an online social network. An article in last week’s New York Times has amplified both the size and scope of the NEJM study. Seemingly every medical professional with a blog has been weighing in with an opinion of their own.

Jon Barron’s health blog reported some of the more surprising details contained in the journals conclusions. Essentially, if you have a network of friends who are either obese or are in the process of becoming significantly overweight you are extremely likely to follow suit. For instance, “If your spouse becomes obese your chances of weight gain increase by 37%, but if your friends become obese your chances of doing the same increase by an astounding 171%.”

GetFitSource, a blog specializing in healthy lifestyles, noted that this is a natural tendency among humans and that, basically, this is a case of monkey see- monkey do. The post noted that “For example, if a close friend or sibling returns from a European vacation, we are likely to follow.” Obviously, they agreed that this type of peer motivation was an integral part of your overall odds in regards to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. “If close friends or siblings become fat, well, gradually our norms for what is acceptable weight-wise may loosen and we are probably less resistant to gaining weight.”

Having a look at the New York Times article showed me an aspect of the study that I hadn’t initially thought of, but completely made sense upon realization- unhealthy eating habits are just like society’s other chief bad habit-smoking. The NYT article said “obesity was just the start… They have already begun asking about other health-related issues. Smoking, for example — have smokers become more isolated over time?” Think about how smokers hang around together and in any environment you work in, the smokers always tend to band together. So much time spent outside coughing together is probably good for fostering togetherness.

“After all, networks evolve, and if smoking becomes unacceptable, smokers might be expected to cluster in their own little orbits, cut off from the mainstream. That, Dr. Fowler said, is exactly what happened. The Framingham data from the 1970s show smokers embedded in social networks just like everyone else. But by the 1990s, smokers began to be shunted to the side, their links to nonsmokers breaking.”

The Framingham data was an integral part in laying the base for the study referenced in the NEJM. Effectively, the Framingham Study (named for the Massachusetts town where it has been going on for several decades) is to observe how an interconnected group of people influences each others behavior over time. The NYT article noted that “as part of the study, participants named friends who could help locate them if researchers lost contact. That link was just what was needed to construct a social network and watch it evolve over decades — a web of friends and friends of friends along with family members.”

The conclusions of the Framingham study are considerable. “The striking feature of networks… Is that they amplify whatever effect they are propagating. One person catches a cold and spreads it to 10 friends, each of whom spreads it to 10 more friends.”

Furthermore, the exact same thing seemed to happen with individuals who had become obese.

“Dr. Christakis and his colleague James H. Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, say they do not know how it happened, but the dynamic was clear — when one person became obese, that person’s friends were more likely to become obese and so were their friends and their friends’ friends.”

One of the things that I am left wondering is whether it would be possible to integrate people into social networks and increase the effectiveness of a weightloss program or a common diet that is shared between the group. If friends influencing friends is the #1 thing that leads to obesity (aside from eating all of the time, obviously) it can definitely be harnessed to aid weight loss and more importantly to help keep the weight off. Since you see so many young people (and senior citizens as well in some cases) documenting their lives online, why not have us all put our health data right out there for a select group of people to see or better yet- the entire world.

We all remember Cool Whip as a summertime treat riding high on pile of strawberries and pound cake. These days, you’d be lucky to find a strawberry shortcake that wasn’t made in China! Well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but you (and Lou Dobbs) get my point. It seems like we all knew Cool Whip couldn’t actually be good for us, which was why our moms only served it every few weeks or so. These days, in our anything-goes dietary culture, Kraft Foods has launched a new type of Cool Whip that is supposedly a lot healthier. They call it Cool Whip Free.

I saw it at the supermarket not too long ago and after having a quick look at the nutritional information, I realized that this Cool Whip wasn’t really free of anything-especially sugar! Am I the only one who finds it aggravating that companies can promote something as healthy or imply a health-benefit with a name when the product isn’t actually healthy?

Although the blogosphere has been pretty quiet about this one I found a post about a very similar experience that somebody over at FitSugar had with Cool Whip Free. “Cool Whip Free may be low in carbs and low in calories, but it is not free of a few things I try to avoid. The top four ingredients are: water, corn syrup, hydrogenated vegetable (coconut and palm kernel oils), and high fructose corn syrup.”

The author of that post actually bought the Cool Whip before they took it home and realized that it wasn’t some form of dessert miracle. Her level of disgust rose quickly, it seems.

My favorite touch, however, is the asterisks Kraft added to the right of the ingredient “partially hydrogenated oil.” The asterisk leads me to a little informational gem of a footnote that reads, “Adds a negligible amount of fat.” Thanks, Kraft I feel so much better about the fact that you can use partially hydrogenated oil, keep the amount per serving to below 0.5 gram, and still claim your product is trans fat free.

And besides, have you ever noticed how there’s two ways to say Cool Whip. Some people, us northerners mostly, plainly say Cool-Whip as two separate words. But I’ve noticed that southerners and people from back east have a tendency to kind of link the two words together. I’d never thought anybody else had ever noticed that until I was watching some cartoon show with my irresponsible grandson. Suddenly, I see a baby and a talking dog conversing on something that had been bothering me for the better part of 20 years.

What an age we live in.

With the dog days of summer in full swing, it can be pretty tempting to reward yourself after a long walk in hot weather by picking up some ice cream. Well, according to an article I read this morning in Canada’s Globe & Mail, that ice cream might be doing a lot more harm than good.

It’s always important to make sure that your active lifestyle isn’t undone by your dietary choices. This is especially confusing when of half the ice cream you see in your grocer’s freezer is labeled “Low-fat,” “Non-Fat,” or “Heart-Healthy.” Here’s some of the logistics on ice cream. “Ice cream is made with cream, milk, sugar, flavorings, stabilizers and emulsifiers and ranges in fat content from 10 to 18 per cent.” Unfortunately that just covers the basic run of the mill ice cream that we all remember from our heyday. Today’s ice cream is jam-packed with more chocolate whizz-bangs and candy-coated doo-dads that caloric intake can rise faster than a sugar-rushed six-year old.

This paragraph pretty much sums up the problem.

A half-cup of standard full-fat ice cream like Breyers Classic or Nestlé Parlour contains roughly 140 calories, six grams of fat and 16g (four teaspoons) of sugar. Add-ins such as chocolate chips, fudge, cookie pieces and candy boost the numbers. For example, a half-cup of President’s Choice Pecan Butter Tart has 180 calories, 8 g of fat (6 of them saturated) and 21 g of sugar. The same serving of premium brands such as Haagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry’s often hits 300 calories, not to mention as many as 25 g of fat (at least half of them saturated) and 28 g (seven teaspoons) of sugar.

Reading that article in the Globe & Mail really got me thinking about how summer brings about a whole new range of nutrition choices you don’t seem to have to make during the rest of the year (for those of us not living in southern-American retirement communities, anyway). Summer means barbecues, boat rides and a lot of time spent in the heat.

To help you keep your dietary wits about you this summer, I found a great article in the FitSugar Blog that you should print out and take a long look at.