…[James Levine, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic]’s initial question ”” which he first posed in a 1999 study ”” was simple: Why do some people who consume the same amount of food as others gain more weight? After assessing how much food each of his subjects needed to maintain their current weight, Dr. Levine then began to ply them with an extra 1,000 calories per day. Sure enough, some of his subjects packed on the pounds, while others gained little to no weight.

“We measured everything, thinking we were going to find some magic metabolic factor that would explain why some people didn’t gain weight,” explains Dr. Michael Jensen, a Mayo Clinic researcher who collaborated with Dr. Levine on the studies. But that wasn’t the case. Then six years later, with the help of the motion-tracking underwear, they discovered the answer. “The people who didn’t gain weight were unconsciously moving around more,” Dr. Jensen says. They hadn’t started exercising more ”” that was prohibited by the study. Their bodies simply responded naturally by making more little movements than they had before the overfeeding began, like taking the stairs, trotting down the hall to the office water cooler, bustling about with chores at home or simply fidgeting. On average, the subjects who gained weight sat two hours more per day than those who hadn’t.

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Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Jeffrey Lacker Thursday said U.S. firms are increasingly looking for an opportunity to raise prices as more expensive commodities squeeze profit margins, raising the risk of inflation.

“In the absence of further energy-price increases, most forecasters do not foresee a significant acceleration in prices this year. We should not take that outcome for granted,” Lacker said at the University of Baltimore.

Earlier Thursday, the Labor Department said prices U.S. manufacturers and wholesalers pay for goods and materials rose a seasonally adjusted 0.7% in March as gasoline prices jumped and food prices fell.

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Here’s another good reason to lose weight: It may improve your memory and concentration, new research suggests.

Scientists know that overweight and obese people are at a greater risk for memory problems and other cognitive disabilities, but the latest study is one of the first to indicate that substantial weight loss improves brain health.

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In the large and growing Orthodox Jewish communities around New York and elsewhere, rabbinic leaders are sounding an alarm about an unexpected problem: a wave of anorexia and other eating disorders among teenage girls.

While no one knows whether such disorders are more prevalent among Orthodox Jews than in society at large, they may be more baffling to outsiders. Orthodox women are famously expected to dress modestly, yet matchmakers feel no qualms in asking about a prospective bride’s dress size ”” and her mother’s ”” and the preferred answer is 0 to 4, extra small.

Rabbis say the problem is especially hard to treat because of the shame that has long surrounded mental illness among Orthodox Jews.

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BOB ABERNETHY, host: For Eastern Orthodox Christians this is Great Lent, the 40-day period of strict fasting leading up to Easter. The Orthodox are supposed to observe fasts of one kind or another nearly all year; no meat on some days, no dairy or oil on others. Their calendars serve as reminders. The discipline of fasting is supposed to help focus the mind on God and bring the person fasting closer to God. Catherine Mandell of Clearfield, Pennsylvania talked with us about her family’s fasts.

CATHERINE MANDELL: The church generally gives us a calendar to help us track those days that we are to fast and which days we’re allowed not to fast. We have several others fasting periods during the year. If you take all those days together you are fasting for more than half the year….

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Mary Seabrook joked that she won’t have to go to Weight Watchers if food prices keep climbing.

“They are awful,” the Ladson resident said while shopping in a downtown Charleston grocery store. “I just shop for the stuff that’s on sale. I just won’t eat as much.”

Overall food prices will climb 3 percent to 4 percent this year as world demand in an economic recovery drives up the cost of fuel as well as basic commodities such as corn, wheat, soybeans and sugar, agricultural economist Chris Hurt of Purdue University said Monday during the Food Media Seminar at Charleston Place Hotel.

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With unemployment still high, companies in recent months have tried to camouflage price increases by selling their products in tiny and tinier packages. So far, the changes are most visible at the grocery store, where shoppers are paying the same amount, but getting less.

For Lisa Stauber, stretching her budget to feed her nine children in Houston often requires careful monitoring at the store. Recently, when she cooked her usual three boxes of pasta for a big family dinner, she was surprised by a smaller yield, and she began to suspect something was up.

“Whole wheat pasta had gone from 16 ounces to 13.25 ounces,” she said. “I bought three boxes and it wasn’t enough ”” that was a little embarrassing. I bought the same amount I always buy, I just didn’t realize it, because who reads the sizes all the time?”

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Lorraine Hanks, a former nutrition instructor, can barely afford to put food on her table.

Two years ago, she was laid off after 17 years working for San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Department, teaching people about healthful meal planning. Still unemployed, the single mom manages to feed her children with free produce and dry goods she gets from the San Francisco Food Bank.

Hanks is one of a growing number of Americans struggling to nourish her family, according to a study released this month by the Food Research and Action Center, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that works to end hunger.

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In light of recent food price spikes ”“ some of which exceed the peaks reached during the now notorious food crisis of 2008 ”“ and the continuing political instability in the Middle East, Dr. [Jeffrey] Sachs’s outlook was markedly darker than usual during a video talk he delivered Friday to a gathering on food scarcity and global security held at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. Despite his trademark frankness in articulating global challenges, Dr. Sachs has traditionally been an optimist.

“Something very dramatic is happening,” he warned a rapt audience. “We’ve entered a new global scenario with respect to food, hunger and conflict ”¦ an era where things are likely to get tougher, not easier, in terms of production,” he said. “We’re hitting boundaries that are very important to understand and very important to counteract.”

Chief among those is the fact that global demand for food ”“ and the agricultural commodities used to produce it ”“ is outpacing the growth of supplies. The onset of climate change, which affects everything from the water supply to crop yields, is a ballooning wedge that will continue to force those trend lines in opposite directions, Dr. Sachs said.

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In the late 1940s, women from Old St. Andrew’s Parish Church turned the tea room custom into an annual fundraising event. As described on Old St. Andrew’s website, a group of women would spend the day preparing the church for services and have lunch on the church lawn. Because the surrounding area lacked restaurants, they often would share their lunches with tourists who visited the church. The need to raise funds for renovations prompted them to begin selling sandwiches and beverages to visitors.

Since then, the tea room concept has grown to include several Lowcountry churches and numerous patrons. Last year, St. Paul’s Church of Summerville served around 3,600 dine-in guests and filled 930 takeout orders in a two-week period.

St. Paul’s tea room and gift shop coordinator Selina Hathaway said that guests consider it to be an “annual reunion of the town of Summerville.” About 190 church members contributed to last year’s tea room, and the funds generated from the event were poured into 33 local, diocesan and world ministries, says Hathaway.

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The government said Saturday that it had found higher than normal levels of radioactive materials in spinach and milk at farms up to 90 miles away from the ravaged nuclear power plants, the first confirmation by officials that the unfolding nuclear crisis has affected the nation’s food supply.

While officials played down the immediate risks to consumers, the findings further unsettled a nation worried about the long-term effects of the damaged nuclear power plants.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company, with help from the Japan Self-Defense Force, police officers and firefighters, continued efforts to cool the damaged reactors on Saturday to try to stave off a further fuel meltdown and stem the radiation leak. The latest plan involved running a mile-long electrical transmission line to Reactor No. 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station to try to restore power to its cooling system.

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Hyperactivity. Fidgeting. Inattention. Impulsivity. If your child has one or more of these qualities on a regular basis, you may be told that he or she has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. If so, they’d be among about 10 percent of children in the United States.

Kids with ADHD can be restless and difficult to handle. Many of them are treated with drugs, but a new study says food may be the key. Published in The Lancet journal, the study suggests that with a very restrictive diet, kids with ADHD could experience a significant reduction in symptoms.

The study’s lead author, Dr. Lidy Pelsser of the ADHD Research Centre in the Netherlands, writes in The Lancet that the disorder is triggered in many cases by external factors ”” and those can be treated through changes to one’s environment.

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The sales tax rate increases today in Charleston County by a penny for every dollar spent, putting more strain on recession-weary consumers who have been watching the price of basic necessities rise and rise again.

County residents voted in November to tax themselves — and the county’s many tourists — a bit more in order to fund school construction projects, but the increase kicks in at an unfortunate time.

Gasoline prices are up nearly 10 percent from just a month ago; the federal inflation measure that tracks food prices posted its largest increase in two years in January; and in most areas, water and electricity rates have been marching up, as well.

Read it all from today’s local paper.

I came to this port city to see if I could get in anyway. I wanted to see what the fuss was all about.

I discovered a good, young restaurant with a zeal for its location and a passion for selling it hard. Mr. Brock makes a mean shrimp and grits at Husk, which is in a beautiful restored 1893 Queen Anne home in the town center. Bartenders carve fine country ham from suppliers like Finchville and Newsom’s and serve it with top-notch bourbon in a barroom next to the restaurant that’s as pretty as any on earth. It’s comfortable on the Husk bandwagon. Everyone’s happy. But as they say down here, I’ll tell you what: I ate at McCrady’s, too. And that restaurant is one of only a few outside the first tier of American cities that could compete in any of them. It is marvelous, well worth a two-hour drive from Columbia, the state capital, or the flight from New York.

Of course, coming to this salty gem of a city would be worth it even if neither restaurant had ever opened. Charleston, with fewer than 125,000 residents, is one of the great eating towns of the American South, on par with New Orleans for quality if nowhere near it for size or variety.

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Americans should brace for higher food prices this year now that demand for corn has pushed U.S. supplies to their lowest point in 15 years.

Higher projected orders from the ethanol industry sent corn futures soaring Wednesday, as corn supplies became the latest commodity to plummet. Low levels of wheat, coffee, soybeans and other food staples have already sent prices surging on the global market.

As those reserves decline, U.S. food companies are warning of retail price increases.

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From here:

Major food producers like Sara Lee Corp., Kraft Foods, General Mills and ConAgra Foods are dropping discounts and upping food prices by 6% to 10% at the stores.

Food riots, geopolitical tensions, global inflation and increasing hunger among the planet’s poorest people are the likely effects of a new surge in world food prices, which have hit an all-time high according to the United Nations.

The UN’s index of food prices ”“ an international basket comprising wheat, corn, dairy produce, meat and sugar ”“ stands at its highest since the index started in 1990, surpassing even the peaks seen during the 2008 food crisis, which prompted civil disturbances from Mexico to Indonesia.

“We are entering danger territory,” said the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s chief economist, Abdolreza Abbassian.

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Significant progress on global malnutrition can be made in 2011, the ecumenical anti-hunger group Bread for the World said Monday (Nov. 22) in its new annual report on hunger.

The U.S. government’s “Feed the Future” initiative has the potential to reduce hunger by addressing long-term economic development and focusing on small farmers, said Asma Lateef, director of Bread for the World Institute.

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Americans don’t know when to stop. Anything.

They eat too much, shop too much, hoard too much, work too much.

That’s the viewpoint of a Southern Connecticut State University assistant professor who sees a connection between all this “too muchness” and the American Dream.

“We overdo pretty much everything,” said Gayle Bessenoff, who teaches psychology. “There’s something about the American Dream that leads to overdoing everything.”

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Cooking oils, left behind in this year’s surge in agriculture prices, are poised to catch up with grains as record demand cuts stockpiles by the most in 17 years.

Inventories of soybean oil and palm oil, used by Nestle SA and Unilever and in everything from Hellmann’s mayonnaise to Snickers candy bars, will drop 12 percent in the coming year as China and India increase consumption 11 percent, U.S. Department of Agriculture data show. Food prices climbed in September to the highest level since the crisis in 2008 that sparked riots from Haiti to Egypt, the United Nations says.

“China’s economy is growing and there’s no reason why the country will take any less food next week, next month, or next year,” said Steve Nicholson, a commodity procurement specialist at International Food Products Corp., a distributor and advisor on food ingredients in Fenton, Missouri. “We’ve been able to produce more food in the past 2,000 years, but can we do it fast enough to meet the demand from China and other emerging economies to stave off a crisis?”

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Nearly 17% of U.S. medical costs can be blamed on obesity, according to new research that suggests the nation’s weight problem may be having close to twice the impact on medical spending as previously estimated.
One expert acknowledged that past estimates likely underestimated the costs and said the new study ”” which places obesity-related medical costs at around $168 billion ”” probably is closer to the truth.

“I think these are the most recent and perhaps statistically sound estimates that have come out to date,” said Kenneth Thorpe, a health policy researcher at Emory University who has focused on the cost of health care.

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Amid the pressures of globalization, under the influence of interests that often remain fragmented, it is wise to propose a model of development built on fraternity: if it is inspired by solidarity and directed towards the common good, it will be able to provide correctives to the current global crisis. In order to sustain levels of food security in the short term, adequate funding must be provided so as to make it possible for agriculture to reactivate production cycles, despite the deterioration of climatic and environmental conditions. These conditions, it must be said, have a markedly negative impact on rural populations, crop systems and working patterns, especially in countries that are already afflicted with food shortages. Developed countries have to be aware that the world’s growing needs require consistent levels of aid from them. They cannot simply remain closed towards others: such an attitude would not help to resolve the crisis.

In this context, FAO has the essential task of examining the issue of world hunger at the institutional level and proposing particular initiatives that involve its member States in responding to the growing demand for food. Indeed, the nations of the world are called to give and to receive in proportion to their effective needs, by reason of that “pressing moral need for renewed solidarity, especially in relationships between developing countries and those that are highly industrialized” (Caritas in Veritate, 49).

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This is a great piece–and I like her five H’s. Watch it all–KSH.

I rushed off to attend the press conference at Queen’s Park officially launching the campaign to ask the government to give a $100 healthy food supplement to each adult on Social Assistance. There was a small crowd but only a single reporter with a few camera people in the audience to hear the three panellists with me speak about the campaign and our experience. Breakfast had been instant oatmeal with milk ”” bland; and a small juice box. No coffee. I was tired and beginning to get cranky. …

The diet on offer is meagre. By noon I was hungry and tired. A photographer was going to snap pictures as I prepared lunch. It was more complicated than I thought. I had planned on soup with some milk and a tuna sandwich, eating half my allotted can. The milk had turned sour, so a package of microwavable noodles substituted. Just add boiling water, cover and wait. I added 1/4 of my one onion to the tuna but there would be no mayo or vinaigrette to moisten it, and no butter and lettuce for the bread. And what to do with the leftovers that I needed to save for Wednesday. If you can’t afford food, you won’t have plastic wrap. I took the groceries out of the bag and used that to cover the tuna and onion mix. I had planned to add cooked rice to stretch it out a bit and perhaps help moisten it. There was no way (or time) to cook the rice. I hadn’t planned it right. And there was no point in adding salt. The noodles alone contributed 58 per cent of the daily recommended sodium intake …

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Despite two decades of public health initiatives, stricter government dietary guidelines, record growth of farmers’ markets and the ease of products like salad in a bag, Americans still aren’t eating enough vegetables.

This month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a comprehensive nationwide behavioral study of fruit and vegetable consumption. Only 26 percent of the nation’s adults eat vegetables three or more times a day, it concluded. (And no, that does not include French fries.)

These results fell far short of health objectives set by the federal government a decade ago. The amount of vegetables Americans eat is less than half of what public health officials had hoped. Worse, it has barely budged since 2000.

“It is disappointing,” said Dr. Jennifer Foltz, a pediatrician who helped compile the report. She, like other public health officials dedicated to improving the American diet, concedes that perhaps simply telling people to eat more vegetables isn’t working.

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The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is holding an extraordinary meeting in Rome sparked by global fears about high food prices.

Friday’s meeting will include Russian grain executives. Moscow banned exports after its harvest was hit by drought.

Flooding in Pakistan and China has added to pressure on the market.

Price rises have already sparked riots in Mozambique and are prompting fears of a massive price spike similar to that of 2007-8.

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To visit China today as an American is to compare and to be compared. And from the very opening session of this year’s World Economic Forum here in Tianjin, our Chinese hosts did not hesitate to do some comparing. China’s CCTV aired a skit showing four children ”” one wearing the Chinese flag, another the American, another the Indian, and another the Brazilian ”” getting ready to run a race. Before they take off, the American child, “Anthony,” boasts that he will win “because I always win,” and he jumps out to a big lead. But soon Anthony doubles over with cramps. “Now is our chance to overtake him for the first time!” shouts the Chinese child. “What’s wrong with Anthony?” asks another. “He is overweight and flabby,” says another child. “He ate too many hamburgers.”

That is how they see us.

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[Bill] Scott and other interested Christians who met for the meal at the Hendersonville church were participating in “What Would Jesus Eat?” a Food in the Gospels Bible course being held at the church on Wednesday evenings for the next few weeks.

The course, taught by Bible student John Snodgrass, aims to shed light on the importance of planting, harvesting and dining through the parables as well as miracles that Jesus performed.

“Jesus is known to us today because he captured the hearts of first-century Galileans, and the best way to the heart of a first-century Galilean was through his stomach,” Snodgrass told the group as they ate.

Snodgrass and his wife Elizabeth prepared the food for the meal. They attempted to re-create a typical first-century Palestinian peasant’s supper.

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The latest news from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on America’s obesity epidemic is not good.

After crunching the numbers in 2009, more states got fatter.

Specifically, the number of states with an obesity rate of 30 percent or more has tripled to nine states in two years, according to the CDC report “Vital Signs: State-Specific Obesity Prevalence Among Adults — United States, 2009.”

To put the report in startling perspective, no state had a 30 percent obesity rate 10 years ago.

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Inside the drab district hospital, where dogs patter down the corridors, sniffing for food, Ratan Bhuria’s children are curled together in the malnutrition ward, hovering at the edge of starvation. His daughter, Nani, is 4 and weighs 20 pounds. His son, Jogdiya, is 2 and weighs only eight.

Landless and illiterate, drowned by debt, Mr. Bhuria and his ailing children have staggered into the hospital ward after falling through India’s social safety net. They should receive subsidized government food and cooking fuel. They do not. The older children should be enrolled in school and receiving a free daily lunch. They are not. And they are hardly alone: India’s eight poorest states have more people in poverty ”” an estimated 421 million ”” than Africa’s 26 poorest nations, one study recently reported.

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