Access Economics estimated the cost of obesity to Australia at $58.2 billion. And sure enough, this enormous headline number promptly headlined in the press.

On Dunsford’s analysis, however, the figures are flawed, skewed by the ”non-financial” estimates to make obesity seem a lot more costly to the taxpayer, in particular, the $49.9 billion in ”non-financial costs”.

These comprised ”burden of disease” numbers, calculated by working out ”years of life lost through disability and premature death” and Access came up with $6.35 million for the value of a statistical life (VSL) and $266,843 for the value of a statistical life year (VSLY).

Tipping scales of credibility

Chubby kids might be cute, but childhood obesity is known to raise the risk for diabetes and heart disease. And an alarming new study shows that even by kindergarten age, large numbers of American kids have a body mass index BMI that suggests theyre on the path to obesity.

The proportion of kids who are heavy rises markedly during elementary school, with the biggest gains coming between first and third grades – and excess weight gain is particularly common among Hispanic children and black girls.

“It not just kids who are already overweight getting more and more so,” study author Ashlesha Datar, a senior economist at California-based RAND Corp., told HealthDay. “There is an entire shift. Even those who are normal weight are gaining weight.”

Obesity now begins in kindergarten? What new study says – HealthPop – CBS News

Normal weight adults, including those who had lost a lot of weight and kept it off, ate more often than overweight people in a new study looking at factors that may help in preventing weight gain.

Researchers following about 250 people for a year found that overweight individuals ate fewer snacks in addition to meals than people in the normal body weight range, but the overweight still took in more calories and they were less active over the course of the day.

“Most of the research has shown that people who eat more frequently have a lower weight,” said lead researcher Jessica Bachman, assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics at Marywood University in Scranton, Pennsylvania. “But no one knows why.”

Overweight people eat fewer meals than others – Yahoo! News

Washington — Congress agreed this week to continue counting the tomato sauce on a slice of pizza as a serving of vegetables for federally-sponsored school lunches.

In doing so, it sided with one of biggest makers of frozen pizza for school lunches the Schwan Food Co. of Marshall, Minn., a frozen pizza giant with more than $3 billion a year in annual sales. The privately held company was at the heart of the lobbying battle in Washington over pizza and convinced several members of Minnesota’s congressional delegation to follow its lead.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison and Republican U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen were the only Minnesota members of Congress to vote against the bills.

Schwan Food pizza brands include Red Baron, Freschetta and Tony’s Pizza. Besides the products it sells to consumers, Schwan’s does a big business selling frozen pizza to the federally-subsidized school lunch program.

A recent press release from the company boasts that it has a 70 percent market share in the pizza category of the $9.5 billion school food service industry.

So when the U.S. Department of Agriculture proposed new, stricter nutritional standards for school lunches earlier this year, it set off a massive lobbying campaign by Schwan and companies such as food giant ConAgra.

Washington pizza sauce fight has deep Minnesota ties | Minnesota Public Radio News

Who needs leafy greens and carrots when pizza and french fries will do?

Congress wants pizza and french fries to stay on school lunch lines and is fighting the Obama administrations efforts to take unhealthy foods out of schools.

The final version of a spending bill released late Monday would unravel school lunch standards the Agriculture Department proposed earlier this year. These include limiting the use of potatoes on the lunch line, putting new restrictions on sodium and boosting the use of whole grains. The legislation would block or delay all of those efforts.

The bill also would allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now.

SDA had wanted to only count a half-cup of tomato paste or more as a vegetable, and a serving of pizza has less than that.

Nutritionists say the whole effort is reminiscent of the Reagan administrations much-ridiculed attempt 30 years ago to classify ketchup as a vegetable to cut costs. This time around, food companies that produce frozen pizzas for schools, the salt industry and potato growers requested the changes and lobbied Congress.

Pizza As A Vegetable? Congress Proposes New School Lunch Bill | Fox News

Researchers say there’s a new way to tell if infants are likely to become obese later on: Check to see if they’ve passed two key milestones on doctors’ growth charts by age 2.

Babies who grew that quickly face double the risk of being obese at age 5, compared with peers who grew more slowly, their study found. Rapid growers were also more likely to be obese at age 10, and infants whose chart numbers climbed that much during their first 6 months faced the greatest risks.

That kind of rapid growth should be a red flag to doctors, and a sign to parents that babies might be overfed or spending too much time in strollers and not enough crawling around, said pediatrician Dr. Elsie Taveras, the study’s lead author and an obesity researcher at Harvard Medical School.

Contrary to the idea that chubby babies are the picture of health, the study bolsters evidence that “bigger is not better” in infants, she said.

But skeptics say not so fast. Babies often grow in spurts and flagging the speediest growers could lead to putting infants on diets — a bad idea that could backfire in the long run, said Dr. Michelle Lampl, director of Emory University’s Center for the Study of Human Health.

Babies on obesity path? New sign may offer answer – BusinessWeek

Rapper and actor Heavy D, who played an influential role in shaping rap music in the late 80s and early 90s with a fusion of New Jack Swing and reggae, has died. He was 44.

Heavy D, who was born Dwight Arrington Myers, died Tuesday in the emergency room at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after collapsing on the walkway outside his Beverly Hills home, according to law enforcement sources. The Los Angeles County coroners office is investigating the cause of death.

Myers, who was 6 feet 3 and weighed more than 300 pounds at one point, anointed himself the “Overweight Lover,” but he had slimmed down in recent years.

Heavy D obituary: Singer who shaped rap in the 80s dies at 44 – latimes.com

Researchers in the United States said on Tuesday they had found a “shocking” association — if only a statistical one — between violence by teenagers and the amount of soda they drank.

High-school students in inner-city Boston who consumed more than five cans of non-diet, fizzy soft drinks every week were between nine and 15-percent likelier to engage in an aggressive act compared with counterparts who drank less.

“What we found was that there was a strong relationship between how many soft drinks that these inner-city kids consumed and how violent they were, not only in violence against peers but also violence in dating relationships, against siblings,” said David Hemenway, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health.

“It was shocking to us when we saw how clear the relationship was,” he told AFP in an interview.

Teen violence linked to heavy soda diet: study

Like a lot of companies, Veridian Credit Union wants its employees to be healthier. In January, the Waterloo, Iowa-company rolled out a wellness program and voluntary screenings.

It also gave workers a mandate – quit smoking, curb obesity, or you’ll be paying higher healthcare costs in 2013. It doesn’t yet know by how much, but one thing’s for certain – the unhealthy will pay more.

The credit union, which has more than 500 employees, is not alone.

In recent years, a growing number of companies have been encouraging workers to voluntarily improve their health to control escalating insurance costs. And while workers mostly like to see an employer offer smoking cessation classes and weight loss programs, too few are signing up or showing signs of improvement.

Insight: Firms to charge smokers, obese more for healthcare

Drinking cold water causes the body to burn more calories and could be an effective weight-loss method for overweight children, according to research published in the International Journal of Obesity.

Studies have suggested that drinking water has a thermogenic effect in adults that significantly increases their resting energy expenditure (REE), the calories required to maintain normal body functions in a resting state.

To Burn Calories, Try Ice Water – WSJ.com