More Fruits and Vegetables in Kids Diets Means Lower Risk of Early Heart Disease, Say Experts

Photo courtesy of The Tehran Times Daily Newspaper.

We all know that adding more fruits and vegetables to our family’s diet is important, but it’s good to remember why. Besides improving our own health, we also teach our kids healthy eating habits that will benefit them for a lifetime.

Between lives that run at a frenzied pace and media marketing of high fat meals, in recent decades healthy eating has dropped dangerously low on people’s priority lists. And, there’s a price for this.

Around the world, and especially in America, people are getting heavier and heavier, developing more and more health problems, and teaching their children the same bad eating habits – consequences are children developing early risk factors for heart disease by the time they reach puberty.

Heart disease is when enough blood can’t circulate to the heart muscle, which slowly damages its ability to function.

The American Heart Association just published a study which said that children as early as nine years old were showing precursors to heart disease, including  obesity, elevated blood pressure, and high Low-Density Lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, which is the bad kind. Teen smoking was also considered a risk factor.

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USDA Increasing Milk Supply to Aide Struggling Americans

Photo courtesy of the Riverlands Lodge.

WASHINGTON, D.C.- In a measure to help struggling Americans, approximately 200 million pounds of products made from nonfat dry milk will be made available to domestic feeding programs, according to the United States Department of Agriculture‘s Food and Nutrition Service.

The goal is to help both struggling low-income families, and dairy farmers who have been challenged by high feed costs and low dairy prices. “The USDA’s disposal plan will benefit dairy farmers who have seen markets disappear and prices plummet in recent months, by increasing consumption of milk and other dairy products,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a statement.

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Salmonella Fears Result in Nature’s Path Recalling Select Granola Products

RICHMOND, British Columbia - Nature’s Path Organic Foods is voluntarily recalling a select group of its granola bar and granola cereal products due to potential Salmonella contamination. The recall is a precautionary measure because the peanuts in the products came from the Peanut Corporation of America, Blakely, Ga., which earlier this year distributed potentially contaminated products to more than 100 consignee firms for use as ingredients.

Salmonella is an organism which can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Healthy people infected with Salmonella often experience fever, diarrhea (which may be blooded), nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain.

In rare circumstances, infection with Salmonella can result in the organism getting into the bloodstream and producing more severe illnesses such as arterial infections, endocarditic, and arthritis.

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International Recall of Tainted Baby Formula

Photo courtesy of Nature Baby.

HONG KONG - The Centre for Food Safety is advising parents to stop feeding their babies the formula Babynat Organic Infant Milk which has been found to have batches contaminated with the Enterobacter sukiyaki bacteria.

“Symptoms [of infection] include poor feeding response, irritability, jaundice, grunting respirations and unstable body temperature, with infection progressing to meningitis in a large number of neonatal cases,” according to information provided by Ecolab, a St. Paul, Minn.-based provider of cleaning, food safety and health protection products and services for the hospitality, foodservice, healthcare, and industrial markets.

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January Food Festivals Nationwide

We all love to eat and some of us love to cook! With this in mind, I came across a section at Delish.com called Food Festivals and Cook Offs that I had to share. They make a list of what they consider to be the best events around the country divided by month.

For January, they have everything from a seafood festival in Florida to wine and chocolate tasting event in New Jersey to a rib-cook off in California. There are also healthier events like an oatmeal festival in Colorado and a carrot festival in California, but I thought I’d mention the more fun stuff first.

Any way you slice it, it’s worth visiting the site to see what interesting events are going on in your area.