Health Blog

August 2008 - Posts

More News on Fast Food

The latest news on fast food doesn’t have to do with what you’re choosing for your own drive-through lunch or dinner – this time, it’s focused exclusively on kids. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) just released what’s considered the most comprehensive evaluation of kids’ meals.

The report looked at 13 top chain restaurants that offer kids’ meals, which included nearly 1,500 children’s meal combinations. (Many top chains were left off the evaluation because they do not have dedicated kids’ meals or do not share nutritional information.) The study compared meals/meal combinations against nutritional standards for the age range to which the meals are marketed (ages 4 to 8 for standard kids’ meals and ages 9 to 13 for older kids’ meals).

The most significant finding was that 93% of meals failed on the standard for calories in kids’ meals (the standard is 430 calories). In addition, 86% were high in sodium (the standard is 770mg) and 45% were high in saturated and trans fat (the standard is no more than 10% of calories). You can access the full CSPI report here.

While many of us may have suspected that fast food meals aren’t the healthiest option for kids (after all, the report found that the most common children’s food offered is fried chicken, which is at 89% of restaurants examined), the increased focus on so-called healthy options in restaurants seems to suggest that the meals are healthier than they actually are. For example, almost all of the fast food chains seem to offer fruit (vs. french fries) and milk or juice (vs. soda). However, the calories, sodium and fat still come up high.

So what’s the solution? Kids are eating out more than ever – about 167 times per year. For starters, parents can consider eating home more frequently, where kids typically consumer fewer calories and healthier meals overall. When eating out, some experts suggest that rather than ordering a pre-packaged full kids’ meal, consider ordering items a la carte, so you can pick and choose the healthiest items. Finally, since many restaurants don’t post calorie information where it’s easy to find at the point of purchase (e.g., on the Web only, on a hard-to-locate sign, or on the bottom of the box you’ve already purchased), try reviewing nutritional information online before eating out and making your kids’ selections in advance.

Kerry

Posted Aug 04 2008, 05:17 PM by kiseman with 0 comments Add your comment

The Last Lecture

I’m sure many of you have heard of Randy Pausch and the phenomenon that became known as The Last Lecture. And if you haven’t here’s a quick recap. Randy Pausch was a popular computer-science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. At some point I’m sure you had a teacher like him – the teacher whose class filled up every year, who was so dynamic and personable that they made you forget you were actually learning something.

On September 18, 2007, Randy gave a speech titled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dream,” to an audience of more than 400 current and past students, colleagues and friends. The geneses of this speech was an ongoing series of lectures by other professors where they were presented with the hypothetical question, “what would you say if you knew you were going to die and had a chance to sum up everything that was most important to you?” Well for Randy it wasn’t hypothetical, because in August 2007 he learned that the pancreatic cancer he had been battling was terminal.

His speech, which was videotaped and put on the Internet, was so uplifting, so funny, so inspirational that it became a global phenomenon and eventually led to him authoring the book “The Last Lecture.”

Through his speech and his book Randy was able to impact the live of thousands. And I am one of those thousands. In the last 2 years I lost both my parents to cancer and I miss them every day. I think about my parents, but what I miss most is the fact that they aren't here to see their grandchildren grow up.

I needed Randy’s speech to get me to stop feeling sorry for myself and to remind me of what’s important in life. As adults I think we forget that we had childhood dreams. We get so caught up in work, paying bills and the day-to-day stresses of life that we lose track of ourselves.

Since reading about Randy’s lecture and seeing it on YouTube I’ve found myself looking at life through my children’s eyes. For them everything is so new, every obstacle is a chance to learn rather than a boundary and every achievement (large or small) celebrated. And those childhood dreams of mine – I’ll start working on some of them, but what I really want is for my children to never lose sight of their dreams.

On July 25, Randy Pausch lost his batte with cancer, but I think it's safe to say that his spirit and his message will live on in many of us.

Jason