You are currently browsing Health.

How To Get Kids To Eat Apples? Make Them Taste Like Grape Candy

There is no escaping artificial flavor. It’s everywhere, and the people who invent it argue that it will enhance your experience of a food — making it more tropical, more floral, or more bitter, in a good way. Artificial flavors of familiar favorites also have long tricked kids into eating things they think they don’t [...]

Binge Drinking: Risky And Widespread

Binge drinking in America looks to be an even bigger problem than we thought. About 1 in 6 Americans, or 17 percent of the population, went on at least one drinking binge in a month last year, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That works out to 38 [...]

Nicotine Patches Up Early Memory Loss In Study

Slapping on a nicotine patch may not just be for smokers trying to kick the habit. In an intriguing test, researchers tried nicotine patches as a memory booster for nonsmokers with mild declines in their thinking ability, a precursor to dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. “There were improvements in attention and memory performance in patients who [...]

Growth In U.S. Health Spending Stays Slow; Experts Cite Lagging Economy

No, it’s not quite going down. But health care spending in 2010 rose at the second-slowest rate in the last half-century. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reports that total health spending in the U.S. increased by 3.9 percent in 2010, just a notch above the slowest rate since the government started keeping track [...]

The Forgotten, Fascinating Saga Of Crisco

Our friends over at Planet Money produced a delightful podcast last Friday called “Who Killed Lard?” They finger a corporate perp: Proctor and Gamble’s brilliant marketing campaign for the original Crisco, an alternative to lard that went on sale in 1911. “It’s all vegetable! It’s digestible!,” it proclaimed. The Planet Money podcast doesn’t pursue the [...]

Controversy Swirls Around Harsh Anti-Obesity Ads

Stark billboards and television commercials that feature overweight kids are part of a controversial anti-obesity campaign in Atlanta. The goal of the “Stop Sugarcoating It, Georgia” ads is to shock families into recognizing that obesity is a problem. The campaign is making an impact, but the tactics are raising questions. One of the ads features [...]

Diabetes’ Economic Toll Goes Far Beyond Medical Bills

By now most people have probably heard the dire predictions about how much the growing prevalence of diabetes will cost the U.S. health system in the coming years and decades. But a new study from researchers at Yale suggests that the disease, which currently affects nearly 8 percent of the U.S. population, could have significant [...]

Excedrin, Bufferin, NoDoz And Gas-X Recalled

It’s enough to give you a headache. Some of the pills inside the bottle of Excedrin in your bathroom cabinet might be the wrong ones. Drugmaker Novartis is recalling a slew of nonprescription medicines due to quality issues at a factory in Lincoln, Neb. Look out for Excedrin and NoDoz with expiration dates of Dec. [...]

For Kids With ADHD, The Elimination Diet Falls Short Of Success

You may remember the controversial studies linking food coloring and additives to hyperactivity in kids. Or you may know parents who have pinned their hopes on an elimination diet to improve their kids’ rowdy behavior. “When [elimination] diets fail, parents can feel they’ve failed,” says Linda Brauer, coordinator of the Grand Rapids chapter of the [...]

A Changing Picture For Cancer Deaths In The U.S.

This year, there will be 1.6 million new cases of cancer in the U.S. And, the American Cancer Society estimates, more than 577,000 people will die from the disease. As depressing as those figures might sound, there’s room for optimism in the group’s latest annual look at cancer in America. From the early ’90s until [...]