Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

I haven’t eaten brussel sprouts since that day in 1984 when my grandma wouldn’t let us leave the table until we ate all of our brussel sprouts. I remember looking at the round green baby cabbages, wishing they would disappear.

We were forced to eat lots of food that we didn’t like when we stayed with Grandma and Grandpa. We experienced months of salad, green beans, sugar snap peas, raspberries, strawberries and sometimes a couple carrots would be ready to eat before we were shipped back to Salt Lake at the end of the summer. All of those foods have become not only food that I’ve learned to enjoy, but gateways to the past.

Not brussel sprouts. I haven’t tried them again since she forced me to eat all four of those green monsters. Now, I find that maybe my grandma wasn’t faking it when she said they were delicious.

• Reuters – Genetic “sweet tooth” wears off with age

According to recent studies, things taste different when you are an adult than when you’re a kid. What tasted bitter and unpleasant when you were ten can mellow and taste like a delicious treat when you become an adult. I guess it’s time that I give brussel sprouts another try. Maybe this time, I’ll be able to eat them all without wishing for a dog to feed them to.

For those of you of the Catholic Faith, Lent starts today. For some, Lent involves much stricter (and maybe even healthier) living. Lent is the practice of giving up a food or activity that represents a sin that is particularly difficult for you to conquer. There is also an element of fasting in the tradition of Lent, whether it be meat (for the entire forty days or just on Fridays) or, for the truly devote, fasting entirely for one day a week.

You don’t need to be Catholic to follow the practice of Lent. You don’t need the dark ash on your forehead today in order to devote yourself to healthier living. If you have fallen off the New Year’s Resolution wagon, here is another practice that urges you to live a better life. Choose something to give up (or add) in your life right now and hold to it for forty days. By then, you may have lost a taste for it.

Belief.net – Fasting Chic? by Gregg Easterbrook

As if heart disease and stupidity weren’t threats enough, obesity has been linked to kidney stones and fruits and veggies help prevent kidney cancer:

• Reuters – Obesity Increases Risk of Painful Kidney Stones
• Reuters – Bananas, Root Veggies May Cut Kidney Cancer Risk

All the more reason to skip the dessert, grab a banana and jump on the treadmill.

I have heard a lot of claims about soy protein. I have heard that it will lower your cholesterol. I have heard that it will help you through menopause. I have heard that it will lower your risk for heart disease. Are any of these claims true?

• Quackwatch – Soy: Health Claims for Soy Protein, Questions About Other Components by John Henkel

This article has some details on soy and what the FDA allows. It provides the basic information on what researchers have found out about soy protein and its components.

Reuters has an article about a study that found a correlation between lack of sleep and high BMI. It has some really sound advice about taking care of your body.

• Reuters – Stay Thin by Sleeping More?

Losing weight, increasing your exercise level and adjusting your food intake can make you tired. You have a couple of choices when you’re tired. You can eat food to wake yourself up. You can consume caffeine or another stimulant to wake yourself up. You could sleep more. Whenever you have a choice like this, please choose the most healthy option.

Schedule more sleep time into your week. You will be more efficient at work. Your workouts will feel better. You will eat less food or consume less caffeine to “wake yourself up” because you’ll be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I promise that you won’t regret the television show that you missed the night before.

Men’s Fitness Magazine has the rankings for the fittest and fattest cities in the United States.

• Men’s Fitness – America’s Fittest and Fattest Cities

I see these sorts of rankings several times a year and I have just swallowed them whole in the past. “Maybe if I lived in Seattle, then I’d be thin,” I think to myself. Only now am I questioning the data…

(more…)

This article from the Behavior and Health Blog at John Hopkins Public Health brings up an interesting question. What can public health do about obesity? This quote from Daniel Hale, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio:

“The problem is, most of the potential solutions rest either on very large changes in public policy or very small changes that individuals and families must make in the context of their own home. [later] There is very little we in the public health community can do. We don’t have very much control over what children eat, we don’t have much control over safety, which affects where children play, and we’re not in people’s homes, where kids are taking part in the major sedentary behavior, known as television watching…….”

Do I want the government controlling what the nation is allowed to eat or do? Do I want public health aggressively addressing the obesity problem? The idea of public policy on this issue brings to mind a scene from 1984 by George Orwell…

(more…)

Last month, I wrote an article called, “Should You Take a Vitamin Just in Case” and I linked to an article on Ortogo Healthy Lifestyle’s website. The author of that article popped in and left a comment clarifying some items.

Check out the comments here: Should I take a vitamin “just in case”? Comments

It’s always nice to have clarification from the author of a work. Thanks, Matt!

The following is a comment from “Should I Take a Vitamin Just In Case“

“There’s another interesting question lurking in the background when discussing whether or not a daily multivitamin is a good idea. What of all the food products now that contain vitamin supplements? I’m a regular consumer of the Snapple A Day products (90 cals, lots of nutrients – I use it instead of breakfast) and have also been drinking the Minute Maid Kids+ orange juice for some time. Have you seen anything that covers the possibility of overdoing nutrient intake by using such supplemented products?” Comment by Sinistar — 12/24/2004 @ 8:30 am

This site gives specifics regarding the amounts of vitamins that are unhealthy and the effects:

• Vitamin Overdose

This site goes into detail about which supplements to avoid, the limits for many vitamins and minerals and whether vitamins are worth their weight in gold:

• Vitamins – Are they helpful or harmful?

Games for Health is a website that looked like it would be interesting to me. They just received funding for The Serious Games Initiative to encourage the creation of games that promote good health. Sounds like something that I would think was cool, right?

Then I saw their list of games…

(more…)