In a study commissioned by Aetna, the insurance giant measured everything from how we rank our health compared with other generations—to why some of us exercise at all: To look good in our underwear.

“There is a disconnect,” mused Keri Gans, about the study’s participants. “It’s surprising.”

For example, while 67 percent of people believe they need to lose a median of 25 pounds, another 54 percent believe they can be healthy—even if they’re overweight, the “What’s Your Healthy” study found.

But jokes aside, misinformation can mean serious health consequences. More than a third of adults are classified as obese by the Centers for Disease Control.

“Being healthy is about being at a healthy body weight … the higher their weight goes, the higher their risk increases,” said Gans, also author of the “The Small Change Diet.”

Millennials—those between 18 and 34—are more likely than other generations to think that having good eating habits and exercising regularly equals being healthy—even as they are far more likely to hit the booze to deal with stress, which 37 percent of them admitted doing often.

And about half of the millennials and GenXers—those 18 to 48—said they snack on unhealthy food when they’re stressed out.

These two younger groups, perhaps not surprisingly, are more vain than the older baby boomers—with about a third of each of the younger generations saying they care about looking good in their underwear.

Just 19 percent of the baby boomers worry about how they look in their undies.

Americans Less Healthy Than They Think: Study

An Indian airline has hit on possibly the worthiest excuse yet for hiring slim women as cabin crew — it saves fuel and therefore money.

While some airlines admit to hiring women for their sex appeal, budget carrier GoAir has told The Times of India it will be hiring predominantly female flight attendants in future because they are 15-20 kilos lighter on average than men.

The airline estimates each extra kilo on board costs Rs3 $0.05 per flying hour, and the new policy will save it up to $500,000 annually.

A spokesman for the airline denied to CNN that it had implemented a gender-biased recruitment policy. But he confirmed that the airlines male-female cabin crew ratio of 40:60 was among the most male-heavy in the industry in India.

He also confirmed that GoAir would be seeking to adjust this ratio to be in line with the industry norm of 30 men to 70 women.

Other weight-reduction initiatives will also be employed.

“The size of in-flight magazines has been reduced,” the airlines CEO Giorgio De Roni said. “The potable water tanks are no longer being filled to capacity as only 35% to 40% of that water is actually used.”

GoAir’s 130 male cabin staff out of 330 total will be unaffected — the policy affects future hires only. The airline expects to hire around 2,000 flight attendants and pilots over the next seven years.

Weight and its reduction is a key focus for airlines as fuel costs, comprising a third to half an airlines operating costs, continue to rise.

Airline recruits women to save fuel – CNN.com

Get people to drink swap tea or coffee for soft drinks with breakfast _ that’s one of the strategies Coca-Cola’s main bottler in Europe is targeting to boost sales in the United Kingdom.

Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. issued a report last week that identifies a variety of ways it can increase sales over the next five years in the region. One category entitled “Complete the Meal” notes that breakfast is often referred to as the most important meal of the day, with about a quarter of all drinks being consumed before 10 a.m.

“How do we motivate people to make soft drinks, like smoothies, juices and other on-the-go products, part of their morning ritual in the same way as tea or coffee?” the report asks.

In a statement, the company said it was referring specifically to smoothies and juices in suggesting breakfast as an area for growth.

Coca-Cola Enterprises’ UK growth plan: breakfast

“I was worried about the way he ate,” Pantoliano told “Extra.”

Pantoliano, who played Ralph “Ralphie” Cifaretto on two seasons of the HBO series, recalled a dinner scene where Gandolfini ate steak and eggs for hours.

“I said do you know how much cholesterol is in there? And he said, ‘Eh.’ And he is chewing the whole time. He says, ‘25 percent of my arteries are blocked.’ I said, ‘Are you crazy?’ And he said, ‘Hey, 75 percent still work.’”

The Post learned that the 51-year-old actor, who struggled with booze addiction in his final weeks, scarfed down a decadent final meal that included at least eight alcoholic drinks. He died of a heart attack on June 19 while he was in Rome with his son 13-year-old son Michael for the Taormina Film Festival.

Joey Pantoliano: I was ‘worried’ about James Gandolfini’s eating habits – m.NYPOST.com

Eating two large meals a day yielded more weight loss than consuming six mini-meals with the same number of calories, according to a study that challenges the common wisdom on appetite control.

Over 12 weeks, people with Type 2 diabetes who ate just breakfast and lunch lost an average of 1.23 points in body mass index, or BMI, compared with a loss of 0.82 point for those who ate six smaller meals of the same nutritional and energy content. The data, in a small study involving 54 patients, were presented today at the American Diabetes Association meeting in Chicago.

The study builds on previous results disproving the theory that eating more frequently improves weight loss. That pattern, thought to work because it helps control appetite, was shown to produce no more weight loss than three regular meals in a 2010 study published in the British Journal of Nutrition. The latest report eliminates one additional meal.

“Our results support the ancient proverb: ‘Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper,”’ Hana Kahleova, a researcher at the Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine in Prague, Czech Republic, said today in a presentation.

Two Large Meals a Day Tops Six Mini-Meals for Weight Loss – Bloomberg

The Pacific national airline is creating a wider row on its aircrafts for passengers who weigh more than 286 pounds 130 kilograms. Samoa has one of the worlds highest rates of obesity.

The airline’s head, Chris Langton, said the XL row would be extended by 12 to 14 inches and the changes would be introduced by the end of the week.

“Once youre up around that sort of [weight] … a traditional seat on any airline is going to be uncomfortable,” he told ABC News.

“Quite often the access is difficult, and even the space between the seats is enough that even when youve squeezed into the seats theres no room for your legs. Thats where the XL has come in – we do it with shirts and clothing and other things where we have different standard sizes.”

Passengers on Samoa Air do not pay for a seat but pay a fixed price per kilogram, which varies according to the length of the route. The passengers nominate their weight and are then measured, along with their baggage, on scales at the airport. The rates range from about $1 64p a kilogram on the airlines shortest domestic route to about $4.16 per kilogram for travel from Samoa to the neighbouring nation of American Samoa.

Samoa Air introduces XL class for larger passengers – Telegraph

Previous studies have suggested that both depression and strong emotions can affect how and what we taste. Now that fat has been shown to stimulate taste receptors in a similar way to other qualities like sweetness and bitterness, a group of German researchers wondered whether our psychological state could also affect how we taste and perceive fat.

To test this relationship, the researchers brought in 80 subjects (48 women and 32 men) from 19 to 47 years old. The participants were asked a few questions about their lifestyle and were each given a questionnaire called Beck’s Depression Inventory, which evaluates depression-related symptoms such as irritability and feelings of guilt. Based on the responses, the subjects were divided into two groups: the “subclinical depression” group, each of whom had depression scores lower than the median, and the “no subclinical depression” group, who had depression scores that were higher than the median.

Then each participant watched a series of movie clips—in random order—intended to alter their mood. The first, designed to make people happy, was a clip from “An Officer and a Gentleman,” in which the protagonist reunites with his girlfriend. The second video, which was intended to increase negative feelings, was a scene from “The Champ,” in which the hero dies in front of his young son. Finally, the third clip was from a documentary on copper production, which served as a neutral control (assuming you don’t have deep feelings for copper). The videos did elicit the desired feelings; participants reported more negative feelings after the sad clip than either the neutral or the happy clip and reported more positive feelings after the happy clip then the other two.

After each video, each participant was given a taste test. They were asked to sample several different concentrations of five different “tastes”—sour (citric acid), sweet (sugar), umami (monopotassium glutamate), bitter (quinine), and fatty (milk fat)—and then rate the concentration of each sample from zero (barely detectable) to 100 (the strongest imaginable taste).

Here’s where it gets interesting: after both the happy and the sad video clips, the mildly depressed participants were unable to taste differences in the fat stimuli. Despite the fact that they tasted the fatty mixture in ascending order of concentration, these people couldn’t recognize that the intensity of the fat had changed. The non-depressed group, however, had no trouble distinguishing between the different concentrations of fat.

Before watching any of the videos, each group was equally able to distinguish between the various concentrations of the fatty mixture, and the neutral video had no effect on this ability in either group. It appears, therefore, that emotional stimulation, whether positive or negative, can affect peoples’ ability to perceive fat—but only in those who are mildly depressed.

Although the mechanism wasn’t directly tested, the authors think that in people with depression, changes in mood may trigger variations in neurotransmitter levels, which might, in turn, affect taste perception.

It’s possible that variation in the perception of fat may play a role in emotional overeating and obesity. The researchers looked at the relationship between the participants’ BMI and their depression rating and found another interesting difference between the two groups. In the more depressed group, these variables were related; as BMI increased, so did a person’s score on the depression questionnaire (indicating higher levels of depression). In the unaffected group, there was no relationship between BMI and depression score.

Obviously, correlation is not causation, and the researchers aren’t claiming that depression causes weight gain or that obesity triggers depression. However, there does appear to be a significant and complex relationship between depression and taste perception. Other studies have found that obese people tend to underestimate the amount of calories they take in, and that obesity, negative feelings, and emotional overeating tend to be associated. It’s certainly possible that taste perception could play a major role in the relationship between obesity and depression, so understanding the conditions that trigger changes in the perception of fat and other tastes may help us improve both mental and physical health.

How we feel can change how we taste fat | Ars Technica

High school boys in Los Angeles are twice as likely to induce vomiting or use laxatives to control their weight as the national average, with 5.2% of those surveyed saying they had recently done so, according to the most recent survey data gathered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Los Angeles Unified School District. They are also more likely to have used diet pills, powders or liquids than boys nationwide.

The numbers challenge old assumptions that boys are immune to a problem better known to afflict teenage girls. Girls still exceed boys in fasting to lose weight, but the latest data, from 2011, showed that Los Angeles boys were nearly as likely as girls to purge through vomiting or laxatives. They were also as likely as girls to use diet pills, powders or liquids without the advice of a doctor — 6.2% said they recently used such substances, compared with 6.1% of girls.

Some experts say boys are starting to face the pressures long placed on girls, as buff, bare men proliferate in pop culture. Boys today watch Channing Tatum strip as “Magic Mike” or weigh themselves against the muscular Dwayne Johnson. The nonstop chatter of Twitter and Facebook has amplified those messages, therapists say.

“Boys are growing up now with the billboard of the guy with perfect pecs and biceps,” said Roberto Olivardia, a clinical instructor in the Harvard Medical School psychiatry department. “You just didnt see that years ago.”

Eating disorders plague teenage boys, too – latimes.com

An ad agency is taking heat for digitally altering the appearance of a child model to make her appear fatter than she actually is.  The ads have been running in California and depict a chubby little girl drinking from a container labeled sugar.

Emma Bazilian, a media reporter for Adweek told ABC news that “They are taking a perfectly healthy little girl and Photoshopping her to make her look unhealthily obese.”

A spokesperson for the agency behind the campaign said:  “This campaign serves to educate parents…on the realities and dangers of childhood obesity and get them to change their behaviors.

Obesity Campaign Digitally Fattens Kids As Warning

The New York City health department reports an all time high for diabetes-related deaths in the City, according to a press release announcing a new report.

“The Health Department released a new report which states that the number of diabetes-related deaths in New York City for 2011 was 5,695, an all-time high. These deaths include those for which diabetes is classified as the underlying cause of death as well as those for which diabetes is classified as a contributing cause. Even as the overall death rate in New York City continues to decline, diabetes-related deaths continue to increase. Since 1990, the proportion of all New York City deaths related to diabetes nearly doubled, from 6.0% in 1990 to 10.8% in 2011. Overall, one person dies of diabetes-related causes every 90 minutes, adding up to 16 deaths a day in New York City,” reads the health department press release.

“Diabetes is a condition that too many people live with and die from,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, Health Commissioner. “It is linked to our epidemic of obesity, and like obesity, it can be prevented.”

The rise in the number of people with obesity has spawned a second epidemic of type 2 diabetes in New York City. In an April 2013 Data Brief, the Health Department reported that nearly 650,000 adult New Yorkers reported having diabetes in 2011, an increase of 200,000 adults since 2002. Sugary drinks are associated with obesity and with increased risk of developing diabetes. To address the obesity and diabetes epidemics, the Health Department has launched initiatives such as Green Carts and Shop Healthy to increase access to healthy foods, and proposed an amendment to the Board of Health to reduce the portion sizes of sugary drinks at food service establishments.

Diabetes Death Rate Hits All Time High in New York City | The Weekly Standard