Eat a Carrot and Call Me in the Morning

Doctors prescribe vegetables to overweight patients

If the doctor ordered you to eat one additional serving of fruits and vegetables each day as a way to improve your health, would you do it? Recently a group of pediatricians, trying to get young children to swap unhealthy … Continue reading →

On Television, Latino Children See More Unhealthy Food Ads

“When he watches a McDonald’s commercial, he tells me, ‘take me to McDonald’s,’” said the boy’s mother, Sandra Guerra, 38. The stay-at-home mom keeps a bowl of fruit where Giovany can reach when he gets cravings while watching “Pinky Dinky Doo,” a Spanish language television show on Univision. But she says her round- cheeked son does not want fruit. He wants cold cereal and hamburgers. Continue reading →

To Eat and Live in a New Orleans Food Desert

Leonard Richardson rides two buses to the nearest Walmart, nearly six miles from his Marigny apartment. Richardson, 71, takes the weekly hourlong commute, not to buy clothes or electronic gadgets, but to get produce like green beans, bell peppers and celery.

Rachel Frommeyer lives in the same neighborhood. Instead of traveling hours to buy groceries, Frommeyer, 30, shops at a local convenience store, the Super Ten. Her usual groceries: canned tuna, cereal and ravioli.

Both live in a so-called food desert. Continue reading →

Feds scale down monitoring in milk, water

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has scaled back the monitoring of radiation in milk, drinking water and rain, saying data shows radiation levels related to the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant are consistently declining. The California Public Health Laboratory in … Continue reading →