Americans who are employed full time or voluntarily part time enjoy better physical health than those who are unemployed or have less work than they would like. However, those who are not in the workforce at all report the worst health. Employed Americans have a score of 81.4 on the Gallup-Healthways Physical Health Index, compared with 76.1 among those who are employed part time but seeking full-time work, 75.2 for those who are unemployed, and 68.8 for those who are not in the workforce.

Employed Americans in every age group report better physical health than do those who are underemployed or those who are not in the workforce, particularly among those between the ages of 30 and 64.

Those not in the workforce — meaning they are not employed and not actively seeking employment — have the worst physical health overall. While this is partly due to most of these individuals being of retirement age, even among seniors, those who are working report better health than their counterparts who are not. This pattern holds among those between the ages of 30 and 44 as well as those aged 45 to 64, and may be, in part, due to those who have lost or cannot hold work due to poor health and have now stopped seeking employment.

Employed Americans in Better Health Than the Unemployed

Blacks are among the most likely in the United States to be very obese, with about 9% falling into obese class II and 6% obese class III — the highest Body Mass Index (BMI) categories. Asians are by far the least likely to fall into these two classes of obesity. Hispanics are on par with whites for each obesity class.

Relationships by race and the others presented in this article hold true even when controlling for age, ethnicity, race, marital status, gender, employment, income, education, and region.

In U.S., Blacks Most Likely to Be Very Obese, Asians Least

It’s July, and for many of us, that brings back fond childhood memories of family vacations, summer camp or long, happy days spent playing with friends. But this quaint notion of summers as a kids’ paradise is dangerously misleading, evidence from social research suggests.

After spending the summer away from the classroom, children return to school one month or more, on average, behind where they were when the previous year ended. Kids also tend to put on weight in the summer two to three times faster than they do during the school year.

To put it unkindly, the average child becomes dumber and fatter during the vacation. And although there’s no need to declare war on summer, there’s plenty we could do to combat the seasonal learning loss and weight gain.

Consider, first, the evidence for the summer fade effect. Taken together, a variety of studies indicate that students’ academic skills atrophy during the summer months by an amount equivalent to what they learn in a third of a school year, according to a review by Harris Cooper, a professor of education at Duke University, and several co-authors.

This deterioration, furthermore, varies substantially by income and race, and its impact persists even past childhood. Barbara Heyns, a sociologist at New York University who studied Atlanta schoolchildren in the late 1970s, found that although academic gains during the school year were not substantially correlated with income, summer decline was.

Subsequent studies have replicated the finding. Karl Alexander, Doris Entwisle and Linda Olson of Johns Hopkins University, for example, found that the summer fade can largely explain why the gap in skills between children on either side of the socioeconomic divide widens as students progress through elementary school. Children from all backgrounds learn at similar rates during the school year, but each summer students of high socioeconomic status continue to learn while those of low socioeconomic status fall behind.

How Summer Is Making U.S. Kids Dumber and Fatter – Bloomberg

Most Americans say obesity is an “extremely” or “very serious” problem to society, the 81% who do so is up significantly from 69% in 2005, the last time Gallup asked this question. Americans now see obesity as a more serious societal issue than cigarettes — a change from the past.

Gallup has asked Americans how serious a problem obesity, cigarettes, and alcohol are to society three times since 2003. The combined percentage rating obesity as extremely or very serious has increased with each survey. While Americans became more concerned about all three issues in 2005, their concerns about cigarettes has since stayed the same and those about alcohol declined slightly.

Nearly four in 10 Americans now say obesity is an extremely serious problem to society, more than the 30% who say the same about cigarettes and 18% about alcohol. The percentage who say obesity is an extremely serious problem is also up from 27% in 2005.

Americans Concerns About Obesity Soar, Surpass Smoking

A third of the world’s adults are physically inactive, and the couch potato lifestyle kills about five million people every year, experts said in the medical journal The Lancet on Wednesday.

“Roughly three of every 10 individuals aged 15 years or older — about 1.5 billion people — do not reach present physical activity recommendations,” they said in a report that described the problem as a “pandemic.”

The picture for adolescents is even more worrying, with four out of five 13- to 15-year-olds not moving enough, it said.

Physical inactivity was described for the study as failing to do 30 minutes of moderate physical activity five times a week, 20 minutes of vigorous activity three times a week, or a combination of the two.

Inactivity increases with age, is higher in women than in men, and more prevalent in high-income countries, the researchers found.

A second study, comparing physical activity levels with population statistics on diseases like diabetes, heart problems and cancer, said lack of exercise claimed more than 5.3 million of the 57 million deaths worldwide in 2008.

It said inactivity was a risk factor comparable to smoking or obesity.

Physical inactivity kills 5 million a year: report – Yahoo! News Canada

Toddlers who watch too much television will also widen their waistlines, according to a University of Montreal study published this week.

The study of 1,314 children from the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development Parents were asked, “How much time per day does your child spend watching TV?” at 29 months and then again at 53 months. A two-part follow-up test of muscular fitness was conducted on these children when they reached the second grade. First, the children were asked to do a standing long jump test. Second, the children’s waist circumference was measured.

“The mission of this research is not to guilt parents,” reported lead study author Dr. Caroline Fitzpatrick on Monday. “Childhood is a critical period for the development of habits and we were looking for a more direct physical measure of the impact of television on young children.”

The average 2 to 4-year-old in the study sat through 8.82 hours of TV each week. An increase of 4.1 millimeters around the waste was found by age 10.

The habits of the children were ingrained throughout the participants of the school. The study, published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, found nearly 15 percent of the youngsters were watching more than 18 hours of TV a week.

Because researchers relied on mothers’ own reporting of their children’s TV watching habits, Fitzgerald figured their results might be conservative, given the possibility mothers would shave off some TV time.

“Many shows are marketed to parents as educational and beneficial but there is no statistical evidence that this is true,” Fitzpatrick said. “TV watching should be a treat, like chocolate.”

By the numbers: One hour of TV at 29 months led to a 3.61 millimeter decrease in standing long jump results in the second grade. Every hour of TV from 29 months to 53 months led to a 5 percent increase of being in the bottom percentile of the standing long jump test.

One hour of TV from 29 months to 53 months led to a .42 millimeter increase in waste measurement and 18-plus hours per week of TV led to a 7.6 millimeter increase in waste measurement in the second grade.

The study factored in such variables as the family’s income and education as well as the mother’s body mass index.

A 2010 study by Fitzpatrick at the University of Montreal found that each extra hour of TV by toddlers led to a future decrease in how involved they were in school, how good they were at math and how much junk food they ate. Fitzpatrick said she hopes the data will help shape future public health campaigns about the impact of TV watching on children’s health.

Study: Toddlers Who Watch Too Much TV Have Wider Waistlines « CBS DC

Last weekend I met a couple whose children are not permitted to discuss movies or video games at school. The children don’t watch television, have limited computer access and have only seen movies pre-screened by their parents.

There was a time when I might have viewed these restrictions as a bit excessive, but not anymore. With what’s being thrown at kids through media exposure these days, I’m all in with an environment that seeks to filter some of it. As a doctor who treats children, many of whom are overweight or obese, I don’t think there can be much doubt that child-directed advertising is fueling the obesity epidemic. Now, a recently published University of British Columbia study supports that theory with findings that suggest that banning fast-food advertising to children may actually curtail obesity.

Researchers found that a 32-year ban on fast-food advertising to kids in electronic and print media in Quebec resulted in a 13 percent reduction in fast-food expenditures and an estimated 2 billion to 4 billion fewer calories consumed by children in the province. While the rest of Canada has been experiencing the same explosion in childhood obesity seen here in the United States, Quebec has the lowest childhood obesity rate in Canada.

Meanwhile, in the face of our own raging obesity epidemic, child-directed advertising of unhealthful food to children continues unabated. The Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity has just released a 2012 report showing that little has changed since 2009, even though the cereal industry claims to have reduced advertising to children.

Despite a slight improvement in overall nutritional quality of kids’ cereals, children still get “one spoonful of sugar in every three spoonfuls of cereal,” according to Jennifer L. Harris, the lead researcher on the Rudd study, and that sugar is heavily marketed: in 2011, 6- to 11-year-olds viewed more than 700 ads per year for cereals on television while preschoolers saw 595. Cereal companies spent $264 million to promote child-targeted cereals in 2011 (an increase of 34 percent from just 2008). Other companies spend millions more promoting unhealthy products — and it works: television viewing and the associated advertising exposure correlate with an increased intake of candy and sugary sodas.

As if pushing unhealthy food wasn’t enough, pharmaceutical companies are now rolling out ads that are designed to appeal to kids. Children’s Claritin, an allergy medication, now includes Madagascar stickers and blogging mothers are encouraged to hold Claritin parties for all the neighborhood kids. We seem to have accepted the idea of companies encouraging children to ask for foods that aren’t healthy choices; now we’re accepting targeted advertising of products that children can’t possibly evaluate.

It doesn’t matter that children aren’t necessarily the ones checking out at the grocery store and driving up to the fast-food outlet. Parents are being bombarded with requests for sugary cereals, fast food and vitamins shaped like dinosaurs. “No” fatigue is rampant, and eventually, “no” doesn’t help. Other studies have shown that once children become teenagers and are able to exert more control over their food choices, they eat less healthily. Years of being saturated with advertising for exactly the foods parents try to regulate can’t help.

Ban on Advertising to Children Linked to Lower Obesity Rates – NYTimes.com

Being obese does not affect children’s school performance, according to a new British study.

Researchers at the University of York analyzed data from nearly 4,000 participants in the Children of the ’90s Birth Cohort Study.

“We sought to test whether obesity directly hinders performance due to bullying or health problems, or whether kids who are obese do less well because of other factors that are associated with both obesity and lower exam results, such as coming from a disadvantaged family,” study author Stephanie von Hinke Kessler Scholder said in news release from the United Kingdom’s Economic and Social Research Council, which funded the study.

“Based on a simple correlation between children’s obesity, as measured by their fat mass, and their exam results, we found that heavier children did do slightly worse in school,” Scholder said.

“But when we used children’s genetic markers to account for other factors, we found no evidence that obesity causally affects exam results,” she said. “So we conclude that obesity is not a major factor affecting children’s educational outcomes.”

Previous studies have found a link between obesity and poorer grades. These new findings suggest that this may be due to issues that affect both weight and academic performance, including socioeconomic factors such as whether a child’s family is poor, Scholder said.

“Clearly there are reasons why there are differences in educational outcomes, but our research shows that obesity is not one of them,” she concluded.

Obesity Alone May Not Hurt Kids’ Classroom Performance – US News and World Report

Looking to slim down? Then beige is your color, at least as far as fat is concerned.

Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have isolated a new type of energy-burning cell known as “beige fat,” which they say may have therapeutic potential for aiding weight loss and treating obesity in adults.According to a new report published in the journal Cell, beige fat is scattered in pea-size deposits beneath the skin near the collarbone and along the spine. But rather than storing excess calories in the form of jiggly thighs and a jelly belly as blubbery-and-prolific white fat does, this type of fat is a calorie burner.

Sweating and Freezing

“During exercise, muscles release the hormone irisin, which then converts ordinary white fat cells into beige ones – and those beige cells burn up extra calories,” explains Bruce Spiegelman, the senior author of the paper.

Its long been known that the calories burned during exercise exceed the number used during the actual activity. Beige fat could be responsible for torching these extra calories. However, because the muscles also release irisin when the body is cold, Spiegelman speculates that the beige fat mechanism might have evolved as a response to shivering, which, like exercise, is a neuromuscular activity.

Spiegelman doesnt necessarily believe the conversion of cells to beige is permanent. “Its an adaptive process,” he says. “They probably increase or decrease depending on physiological conditions such as age, sex and obesity.”

This could be why more brown fat and perhaps more beige fat is present in people who are fit and physically active versus those who are slothful couch potatoes. An attractive hypothesis to be sure, but Spiegelman cautions theres not yet enough evidence to prove it.

Beige Fat Could Help Fight Obesity – ABC News

Data released recently by the Keep It Real campaign – a joint effort between Miss Representation, the SPARK Movement, Love Social, Endangered Bodies and I Am That Girl – states that 80 percent of all 10-year-old girls have, at some point in their lives, gone on at least one diet.

The campaign was created as an effort intended to get everyone from major magazines and media outlets to mothers and fathers around the world to think more about how their words and actions regarding perceived beauty affect a child’s view of themselves and others.

More specifically, the campaign is asking a slew of well-known beauty magazines to publish at least one unaltered photo per month in the effort to reshape what they feel is an unrealistic representation of women.

The startling statistic came from a study, “Eating Disorders Today – Not Just A Girl Thing” by Kimberly Hepworth, which cited an earlier article published on the topic by Lori Henry at Suite101.com.

And it’s just one of many pieces of information the campaign is releasing in order to raise awareness.

“[A total of] 53 percent of 13-year-old girls are unhappy with their bodies,” another blurb reads. “That number increases to 78 percent by age 17.”

Research conducted by the National Eating Disorders Association lines up with what the Keep It Real campaign is saying. According to them, between 40 and 60 percent of children ages 6 to 12 are concerned about their weight or becoming too fat, and 70 percent would prefer to be thinner.

“It’s bad out there, it’s brutal, it’s hard … [and] we’re seeing it younger and younger,” Lynn Grefe, president and CEO of NEDA, told CBS Seattle. “I’ve seen a girl as young as 8 years old on a feeding tube. It’s a serious problem.”

Study Finds 80 Percent Of 10-Year-Old Girls Have Been On Diet « CBS Seattle