A new study suggests that imposing a fat tax on unhealthy food and drinks could help slim down expanding waistlines.

According to British Medical Journal , more than 60 percent of Americans are overweight. Under the tax, a $4 cheeseburger would cost an extra 80 cents, RTV6′s Stacia Matthews reported.

Some Hoosiers found the proposed fat tax hard to swallow.

“I don’t think we should tax people and the way they run their lives,” one man said.

Others said a fat tax is palatable.

“I’d pay 20 percent. It’s worth it,” one woman said. “I would eat a lot more healthy just to save more money.”

Researchers said a fat tax could drop obesity rates by 3.5 percent and prevent 2,700 heart-related deaths a year. The study also urged subsidies for healthier foods and veggies to make them more affordable.

Dr. Eric Wright, who heads the Department of Public Health at the Indiana University School of Medicine, said the fat tax falls right in line with other consumer products.

“Weve applied tax to alcohol and tobacco and that has definitely shown through very many studies that it actually decreased use. So, the logic has been applied to fatty foods and preliminary evidence in Europe is that it’s very effective,” Wright said.

Report: Fat Tax Could Curb Nations Obesity Problem – Staying Healthy News Story – WRTV Indianapolis

A 9-year-old boy removed from his mothers custody after his weight ballooned to more than 200 pounds has slimmed down enough to return home.

The boy, who was placed in foster care last fall and then with an uncle, lost about 50 pounds over four months through exercise and healthy eating. He was returned to his mother under protective supervision in March, and a juvenile court judge in Cleveland released him from that supervision Thursday.

Social service workers still plan on checking in with the boy and his mother in Cleveland Heights and have offered them nutritional and health counseling. The YMCA also gave the boy and his mother a free membership.

“Thats the tremendous thing,” said John Lawson, an attorney who was appointed by a judge to act as a guardian during the court proceedings. “Lets hope we never have to go back to court with this child.”

Obese 9-year-old boy removed from Ohio home sheds 50 lbs – Toledo Blade

Meow, allegedly the country’s heaviest feline, passed away over the weekend after developing respiratory complications.

The nation met the rotund kitty last month after his 87-year-old owner dropped him off at the Santa Fe Animal Shelter, claiming she could no longer care for him – no surprise, given that Meow tipped the scales at 39 pounds. The average cat Meow’s “height” weighs 8-12 pounds; an equivalent-sized human would weigh around 600 pounds.

The orange-and-white tabby became a media sensation, appearing on Anderson Cooper’s show and elsewhere in an effort to find a new home (and perhaps raise awareness of the country’s growing pet-obesity problem). But Meow’s high weight put him at risk of life-threatening complications, which sadly took his life before his new caretakers’ dietary measures could show a benefit. “We are devastated,” Mary Martin, the Santa Fe shelter’s executive director, commented. “We were in a race against time to get the weight off Meow before he developed complications from his morbid obesity and we lost.”

Fat Thanks to Sunita K. for the tip!

Meow, country’s heaviest cat, dies | Pets – Yahoo! Shine

Slowing the rising rates of obesity in this country by just 1 percent a year over the next two decades would slice the costs of health care by $85 billion.

Keep obesity rates where they are now — well below a 33 percent increase that’s been expected by some — and the savings would hit nearly $550 billion over the same 20 years.

Those are two attention-grabbing conclusions from an analysis released this morning at the Weight of the Nation conference in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers from Duke University, RTI International and CDC prepared the analysis, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

It’s the latest work that shows the health care costs associated with obesity, and the stark financial consequence of the epidemic.

Fat Thanks to Sona S. for the tip!

Even A Small Slowdown In Obesity’s Rise Would Save Big Money : Shots – Health Blog : NPR

A new forecast on obesity in America has health experts fearing a dramatic jump in health care costs if nothing is done to bring it under control.

The projection, released Monday, warns that 42% of Americans may end up obese by 2030 up from 36% in 2010, and 11% could be severely obese, roughly 100 or more pounds over a healthy weight vs. 6% in 2010.

“If nothing is done, its going to hinder efforts for health care cost containment,” says Justin Trogdon, a research economist with RTI International, a non-profit organization in North Carolinas Research Triangle Park.

Extra weight takes a significant toll on health. It increases the risks of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, many types of cancer, sleep apnea and other debilitating and chronic illnesses.

“The obesity problem is likely to get much worse without a major public health intervention,” says the studys lead researcher, Eric Finkelstein, a health economist with the Duke University Global Health Institute.

In an earlier study, Finkelstein and experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that medical-related costs of obesity may be as high as $147 billion a year, or roughly 9% of medical expenditures.

Obesity could affect 42% of Americans by 2030 – USATODAY.com

Some North Texas researchers believe they have found a way to control obesity by manipulating molecules in the heart.

Researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas have demonstrated, for the first time, that the heart can regulate energy balance.

“We discovered a protein that’s expressed in the heart, it’s a protein called MED 13, and it turns out that this protein regulates metabolism in the whole body,” explained Dr. Eric Olson, chairman of molecular biology at UT Southwestern.

Dr. Olson said researchers fed mice a high-fat diet, then ‘turned on’ the protein and were genuinely surprised.

“Of course we went back and said ‘wait a minute we better check this again’ and have done it many times,” Olson said, “It was really unexpected. We didn’t go into this looking for a way to treat obesity, it just was a serendipitous observation.”

Of the test Dr. Olson said researchers learned, “We can make them resistant to obesity,” but that wasn’t all, “We can also treat many of the other aspects of abnormal metabolism like the struggle to lower cholesterol and improve glucose handling in these animals.”

Researchers said despite their high-fat diet the mice stayed lean as long as the protein was ‘activated’. When the protein was removed the mice become obese.

UT Southwestern Doctors Make Obesity Breakthrough « CBS Dallas / Fort Worth

A curious — and good — thing has happened on the road to Obesity Nation: the share of the U.S. adult population with high cholesterol has dropped.

Data just out from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that only 13.4 percent of adults in this country have high cholesterol, according to data collected in 2009 and 2010.

A decade earlier, 18.3 percent of adults in the U.S. had high cholesterol.

High cholesterol starts at 240 milligrams of cholesterol per deciliter of blood. Having high cholesterol more than doubles the risk of a heart attack compared with desirable total cholesterol, which is less than 200 milligrams per deciliter.

The government had set a public health goal of getting the proportion of adults with high cholesterol down to 17 percent or less by 2010.

Lately, the obesity wave appears to have leveled off, but at a pretty high mark. Some two-thirds of American adults are obese or overweight.

Being overweight can raise your cholesterol. So what gives?

“Experts believe it’s largely because so many Americans take cholesterol-lowering drugs, but dropping smoking rates and other factors also contributed,” the Associated Press reports.

Fat Thanks to Sona S. for the tip!

Americans’ Cholesterol Levels Shrink, Even As Waistlines Expand : Shots – Health Blog : NPR

From dropping off laundry to grabbing some food, people can do pretty much anything at a drive-thru these days.

Now, a Pentecostal church is extending its spiritual services by offering drive-thru prayer once a week, the Sun-Sentinel reports.

Every Friday, just outside the Christian Life Center in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., volunteers hold placards advertising the prayer offering to commuters.

So far the church has served about 150 people since the program started one month ago, according to the Associated Press.

The volunteers offer to pray with the drivers on any issue, whether it is a bad day, a divorce or a fight with cancer.

Believe it or not, drive-thru prayer isn’t only available in Florida.

The trend also sprung up in Texas, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan and California.

Drive-Thru Prayer: Fort Lauderdale Church Connects With Commuters

The maker of Twinkies and Wonder Bread heads to court Tuesday to try to throw out its union contracts, in a battle that leaves the iconic baker’s future very much in doubt.

Hostess Brands, which makes Ding Dongs and a variety of other sweet treats, is asking the bankruptcy court in White Plains, N.Y. to tear up labor agreements, which would, among other things, allow Hostess to change how it funds union pensions. The hearing is expected to last two days.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers, together represent more than three-quarters of the 18,500 workers at the company.

The Teamsters have vowed to strike if the judge agrees with management’s request and dumps the labor deals.

But both management and the unions agree that the company is unlikely to survive a strike.

“We would no longer have cash to keep operating,” said Hostess management in a letter sent to employees on Monday. “All Hostess Brands operations would shut down and liquidation would begin. The 18,500 jobs, plus the health insurance that comes with them, would be lost for good.”

The company filed for bankruptcy in January, it’s second trip to bankruptcy court since 2004. And management has said that the investors who are financing the company during bankruptcy would pull out if there is a strike.

Strike threat at Hostess could kill off Twinkies – Apr. 17, 2012

Brides-to-be looking to shed that final 10, 15 or 20 pounds in order to fit into their dream wedding gown have taken a controversial approach to crash dieting that involves inserting a feeding tube into their noses for up to 10 days for a quick fix to rapid weight loss.

The K-E diet, which boasts promises of shedding 20 pounds in 10 days, is an increasingly popular alternative to ordinary calorie-counting programs. The program has dieters inserting a feeding tube into their nose that runs to the stomach. They’re fed a constant slow drip of protein and fat, mixed with water, which contains zero carbohydrates and totals 800 calories a day. Body fat is burned off through a process called ketosis, which leaves muscle intact, Dr. Oliver Di Pietro of Bay Harbor Islands, Fla., said.

“It is a hunger-free, effective way of dieting,” Di Pietro said. “Within a few hours and your hunger and appetite go away completely, so patients are actually not hungry at all for the whole 10 days. Thats what is so amazing about this diet.”

Di Pietro says patients are under a doctors supervision, although theyre not hospitalized during the dieting process. Instead, they carry the food solution with them, in a bag, like a purse, keeping the tube in their nose for 10 days straight. Di Pietro says there are few side effects.

“The main side effects are bad breath; there is some constipation because there is no fiber in the food,” he said.

The K-E Diet: Brides-to-Be Using Feeding Tubes to Rapidly Shed Pounds – Yahoo!