Americans now officially drink more bottled water than soda. It’s a shift that decades ago might have seemed unthinkable — that consumers would buy a packaged version of something they could get free from a tap. But bottled-water sales have been growing in the U.S. ever since the arrival of Perrier in the 1970s. The gains accelerated in recent years, as shown in the chart below, amid concerns about the health effects of sugary drinks and the safety of public-water supplies.

Bottled-water consumption in the U.S. reached 39.3 gallons per capita last year, while carbonated soft drinks slipped to 38.5 gallons, according to industry tracker Beverage Marketing Corp. Soda still generated more revenue last year: $39.5 billion in retail sales compared with $21.3 billion for water, according to Euromonitor. And 26% of water revenue in 2016 went to soda giants Coca-Cola Co KO, +0.26% and PepsiCo Inc. PEP, +0.93% , which sell the top two brands Dasani and Aquafina, respectively, and are now pushing higher-priced premium brands.

Source: Americans now drink more bottled water than soda – MarketWatch

Fat Thanks to Nicole E. for the tip!

The results are in from the one of the largest and broadest surveys of health in the United States. And although many of the findings are encouraging — more Americans had health insurance and fewer smoked cigarettes in 2015 than in previous years — the gains were overshadowed by rising rates of obesity and diabetes.

Every year since 1957, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been asking Americans 18 and older about their health and the health of their family members as part of the National Health Interview Survey. The new report contains data from the 2015 survey, which included more than 100,000 people.

“There are some positives that we see” in the report, said Brian Ward, health statistician at CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics and one of the authors of the report, which came out this week.

One such positive was that participants seemed to have more access to health care in 2015 than in recent years, based on their answers about whether they were insured and had a place to go for medical care, such as a doctor’s office or clinic.

However, the big negative is that the rate of obesity in the United States is continuing its upward march. In 2015, 30.4% of Americans 20 and older said they were obese, up from 29.9% in 2014.

Although the 2015 rate is not significantly higher than the previous year’s, it represents a continuation of a trend that has been going on since at least 1997, when researchers began using the current survey and when only 19.4% of Americans said they were obese.

“That is not a good trend there,” Ward said. “[But] it is not necessarily anything unexpected.”

Source: Americans are fatter than ever, CDC survey finds – CNN.com

A 500-pound gangster accused of operating a massive gun-running ring wasn’t about to go hungry at his hearing in Bronx Criminal Court on Monday.

Suspect William “Wobbles’’ Soler made sure he had a secret stash of food — a clear plastic bag of honey-roasted Planters peanuts hidden on his left side, tucked between him and his wheelchair.

The tubby, tattooed gangster was rolled in through the audience entrance, since his wheelchair won’t fit through the door by which inmates typically enter.

Looking annoyed, Wobbles, 33, watched as his lawyer and prosecutors privately hashed out issues in front of the judge for several minutes.

The case was then adjourned until May 6.

Wobbles’ lawyer, Brian Sullivan, said his client has lost up to 80 pounds since his arrest a year ago.

Source: 500-pound gangster packs snacks for court hearing | New York Post

When it comes to reversing the obesity epidemic, there have been glimmers of hope that the U.S. might be making headway, especially with young children.

 

For instance, back in 2013, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention documented declines in obesity rates among low-income preschoolers in many states. And case studies in cities including Kearney, Neb., Vance, N.C., and New York , N.Y., have reported progress, too.

 

But a new study published in the journal Obesity concludes that — though the prevalence of obesity among U.S. children has plateaued in recent years — there is no indication of a national decline.

 

“If you look at the long-term from 1999 to 2014, we see a pretty consistent increase in obesity across all-aged children,” says study author Asheley Cockrell Skinner, a researcher at the Duke Clinical Research Institute at Duke University. And she points to a continued increase in the rate of severe, or morbid, obesity among teens, which rose from 6 percent in 1999 to about 10 percent in 2014.

Source: Plateau But No Decline: Child Obesity Rates Hold Steady : The Salt : NPR

The study found that close to half of Americans who are considered overweight by virtue of their BMIs — 34.4 million people — are healthy, as are 19.8 million who are considered obese.

 

But a new study led by UCLA psychologists has found that using BMI to gauge health incorrectly labels more than 54 million Americans as “unhealthy,” even though they are not. The researchers’ findings are published online today in the International Journal of Obesity.

 

“Many people see obesity as a death sentence,” said A. Janet Tomiyama, an assistant professor of psychology in the UCLA College and the study’s lead author. “But the data show there are tens of millions of people who are overweight and obese and are perfectly healthy.”

Source: Don’t use body mass index to determine whether people are healthy, UCLA-led study says

The soft drinks industry claims that an “unprecedented” series of measures will help cut the nation’s sugar consumption by a fifth.

 

They include promises to avoid targeting the under-16s, as well as introducing smaller, healthier products.

 

Meanwhile, Kellogg’s is vowing to cut 723 tons of sugar next year from cereals such as Frosties and Coco Pops.

 

The moves come just days before David Cameron decides whether to press ahead with a controversial sugar levy to help tackle childhood obesity.

 

Coca-Cola, which owns a range of soft drinks including Lilt and Sprite, is part of an industry-wide pledge to cut sugar consumption by 20 per cent before 2020.

 

But the company — which cut the calories in its drinks by five per cent in 2014 — is only promising another five per cent drop over the next nine years.

 

And it is understood the seven teaspoons of sugar currently in the iconic red 330ml Coke can will stay the same.

Source: Food giants vow to cut calories to beat tax but Coke may stay the same

Health labels on food could be making people fatter rather than helping them to lose weight, a study has found.

 

People eat more food than they should if it is labelled healthy because they think it is less filling than fatty options.

 

Consumers tend to binge when they see nutritional signs because they automatically assume they are making a better choice.
As a result they could end up consuming more calories overall, researchers said.

 

The results suggest that, while eating too much is often the cause of obesity, eating too much healthy food could make you fat too.

Source: Healthy food labels ‘fuel obesity crisis’ say Austin McCombs School of Business | Daily Mail Online

Obesity poses as big a risk to the nation as terrorism, says the Chief Medical Officer.

Dame Sally Davies wants the obesity crisis in women to be classed alongside flooding and major outbreaks of disease – as well as the threat from violent extremism.

Her extraordinary claim comes as she warns today that being overweight affects all stages of women’s lives – including in the womb.

It may lead them to being teased as teenagers, having higher-risk pregnancies and possibly developing breast cancer or heart disease after the menopause.

‘Action is required across all of society to prevent obesity and its associated problems from shortening women’s lives and affecting their quality of life,’ she will say.

She will also urge that mothers-to-be should ‘not to eat for two’ because it is fuelling the obesity crisis.

The advice is a ‘myth’ and women who are too fat are not only jeopardising their own health, they also risk storing up problems for their unborn children.

Expectant mothers who are overweight or obese are far more likely to suffer miscarriages, develop dangerously high blood pressure or complications that make them infertile.

Source: Dame Sally Davies claims obesity in women ‘as dangerous as terror threat’ | Daily Mail Online

They come every year around this time, as reliably as the chilling of the air and the preponderance of red coffee cups: the public-relations pitches, bedecked in exclamation points and cheer, offering expert tips on how to fight the holiday weight, or win the battle of the bulge, or stay svelte through New Year’s. If I had a nickel for every email in my inbox right now exhorting me to put down the pie, I’d have enough money to buy myself several more pies. Not the grocery-store brand, either. The fancy bakery kind.

‘Tis the season, in other words, to make some strangers feel bad about their bodies. Over the weekend, some people in London, purportedly from a group called Overweight Haters Ltd., took that to heart:

Kara Florish, an employee of the U.K.’s National Health Service, tweeted on Saturday that someone had handed her the card while she was riding the London Underground.Here’s the back:According to the BBC, London Transport is encouraging any riders who see the cards being distributed to notify the police.

Fat Thanks to Ketul P. for the tip!

Source: Fat-Shaming on the London Underground – CityLab