Say goodbye to that 2-liter bottle of Coke with your pizza delivery, pitchers of soft drinks at your kid’s birthday party and some bottle-service mixers at your favorite nightclub.

They’d violate Mayor Bloomberg’s new rules, which prohibit eateries from serving or selling sugary drinks in containers larger than 16 ounces.

Bloomberg’s soda smackdown follows his attacks on salt, sugar, trans fat, smoking and even baby formula.

The city Health Department last week began sending brochures to businesses that would be affected by the latest ban, including restaurants, bars and any “food service” establishment subject to letter grades.

And merchants were shocked to see the broad sweep of the new rules.

“It’s not fair. If you’re gonna tell me what to do, it’s no good,” said Steve DiMaggio of Caruso’s in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. “It’s gonna cost a lot more.”

And consumers, especially families, will soon see how the rules will affect their wallets — forcing them to pay higher unit prices for smaller bottles.

Typically, a pizzeria charges $3 for a 2-liter bottle of Coke. But under the ban, customers would have to buy six 12-ounce cans at a total cost of $7.50 to get an equivalent amount of soda.

“I really feel bad for the customers,” said Lupe Balbuena of World Pie in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.

Domino’s on First Avenue and 74th Street on the Upper East Side is doing away with its most popular drink sizes: the 20-ounce and 2-liter bottles.

“We’re getting in 16-ounce bottles — and that’s all we’re going to sell,” a worker said.

He said the smaller bottles will generate more revenue for the restaurant but cost consumers more.

It will also trash more plastic into the environment.

Bloomberg’s large-soda ban also prohibits 2-liter bottles with pizza orders and some bottle-service mixers at nightclubs – NYPOST.com

American children consumed fewer calories in 2010 than they did a decade before, a new federal analysis shows. Health experts said the findings offered an encouraging sign that the epidemic of obesity might be easing, but cautioned that the magnitude of the decline was too small to move the needle much.

And while energy intake has not changed considerably for adults in recent years, fewer of their calories are coming from fast food, researchers said. Obesity rates for adults have plateaued after years of increases. A third of adults are obese.

The results of the research on childhood consumption patterns, the only federal analysis of calorie trends among children in recent years, came as a surprise to researchers. For boys, calorie consumption declined by about 7 percent to 2,100 calories a day over the period of the analysis, from 1999 through 2010. For girls, it dropped by 4 percent to 1,755 calories a day.

“To reverse the current prevalence of obesity, these numbers have to be a lot bigger,” said Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. “But they are trending in the right direction, and that’s good news.”

Fat Thanks to Sona S. for the tip!

Children in U.S. Are Eating Fewer Calories, Study Finds – NYTimes.com

Cats are not usually known for their love of swimming, but one Loudon County, Va., feline is hitting the water instead of the gym in an effort to lose weight.

Fat cat swims to lose weight – CBS News Video

For 50 years we have been told to cut down on lard and butter while eating more sunflower oil and margarine.

The dietitians’ rule of thumb has been saturated animal fat = bad,  polyunsaturated vegetable fat = good

But now US scientists are questioning the conventional wisdom, and asking whether margarine might have been more harmful for us all along.

Cutting down on saturated animal  fat lowers cholesterol and thus reduces the risk of heart attack. However, the new analysis of a study conducted in the late 1960s and early 1970s, some of the data from which had been missing for decades, has revealed that people who followed the standard advice and substituted margarine in place of butter died sooner than those who made no change to their diet.

The researchers from the National Institutes of Health in the US say in the British Medical Journal that their findings could have “important implications for worldwide dietary recommendations.”

Start spreading the news – saturated fat ‘is not so bad,’ says study – Health News – Health & Families – The Independent

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie talked about struggles with his weight on Tuesday, saying his doctor has warned him that his “luck is going to run out relatively soon” but that it doesn’t affect his ability to run the Garden State.

“The idea that somehow I don’t care about this — of course I care about it,” Christie said when asked about his efforts to lose weight at a press conference in Union City, N.J. “I’m making the best effort I can. And sometimes I’m successful, and other times I’m not. And sometimes periods of great success are followed by periods of great failure. And so that’s just the way it’s worked for me for probably the last 30 years of my life. So, I know people have concerns.”

On Monday night, Christie appeared on “The Late Show With David Letterman,” where he jokingly took a donut out of his pocket and took a bite as Letterman teased him about his weight.

Chris Christie on weight: ‘Of course I care’ – Kevin Robillard – POLITICO.com

The Obama administration proposed regulations Friday that would prohibit U.S. schools from selling unhealthy snacks.

The 160-page regulation from the Department of Agriculture (USDA) would enact nutrition standards for “competitive” foods not included in the official school meal.

In practice, the proposed rules would replace traditional potato chips with baked versions and candy with granola. Regular soda is out, though high-schoolers may have access to diet versions.

“Although nutrition standards for foods sold at school alone may not be a determining factor in children’s overall diets, they are critical to providing children with healthy food options throughout the entire school day,” the proposed rule states.

“Thus, these standards will help to ensure that the school nutrition environment does all that it can to promote healthy choice, and help to prevent diet-related health problems.”

The rules are a product of the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which also overhauled the nutritional make-up of regular school meals. They would apply to any school, public or private, that participates in the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program.

Those rules saw a backlash from conservative lawmakers who said students were going hungry as a result of calorie limits. A GOP House member famously compared the rules to “The Hunger Games.” The USDA eventually relaxed some guidelines in response.

Soda, candy out under USDA’s proposed school snack rules – The Hill’s Healthwatch

GPs are to be forced to hand over confidential records on all their patients’ drinking habits, waist sizes and illnesses.

The files will be stored in a giant information bank that privacy campaigners say represents the  ‘biggest data grab in NHS history’.

They warned the move would end patient confidentiality and hand personal information to third parties.

The data includes weight, cholesterol levels, body mass index, pulse rate, family health history, alcohol consumption and smoking status.

Diagnosis of everything from cancer to heart disease to mental illness would be covered. Family doctors will have to pass on dates of birth, postcodes and NHS numbers.

Officials insisted the personal information would be made anonymous and deleted after analysis.

But Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at Cambridge University, said: ‘Under these proposals, medical confidentiality is, in effect, dead and there is currently nobody standing in the way.’ Nick Pickles, of the privacy group Big Brother Watch, said NHS managers would now be in charge of our most confidential information.

He added: ‘It is unbelievable how little the public is being told about what is going on, while GPs are being strong-armed into handing over details about their patients and to not make a fuss.‘Not only have the public not been told what is going on, none of us has been asked to give our permission for this to happen.’

Big brother to log your drinking habits and waist size | Mail Online