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Avoid Fat Kids by Owning a Dog

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

Recently Canada has been identified as being filled with fat people, and there’s a simple way to stop this waist problem from expanding: own a dog. Families that have a dog have kids who are fit and thinner than non-dog owning families.

Go play fetch and stay fit!

And an Australian analysis of 1,145 children found girls and boys with dogs 50 per cent less likely to be fat.

“If you’re a kid and a dog, you chase balls, you play soccer with them, you rumble with them, wrestle them on the carpet even if you’re watching TV,” said Jo Salmon of Deakin University in Victoria, Australia. “It’s activity and it’s a mind thing as well.”

Children whose families owned dogs were more active, with increased light, moderate and vigorous physical activity, regardless of race or gender, reported Christopher Owen, an epidemiologist at St. George’s, University of London, who led the English study.

“The more active lifestyle of children from dog-owning families is really interesting,” he said. “Is it that owning a dog makes you more active or active families choose to have a dog? It’s a bit of a children and egg question.”

Keep reading the article here.

Packing Healthy Lunches

- Adam Clare

The CBC has put online a question and answers interview with some dieticians about how to pack a healthy lunch for kids at school.

There is no reason why you can’t pack a healthy lunch for yourself too!

What are common misconceptions?

Cohen: A lot of people think healthy lunches taste boring, that it’s rabbit food or that it tastes all the same.

How can parents create healthy meals?

Cohen: What’s really important to take small steps. With any program you should not turn everything upside-down. The key is to be educated, talk to your kids and make small changes.

For example, use whole-wheat pasta, low-sugar yogurts and add more fruits to your child’s meals.

Instead of saying “healthy lunches,” talk about balanced eating with your kids. Once they start eating healthier and they go back to trying processed foods, they won’t like them as much.

Read more

Hollywood is Playing it Safe

- Adam Clare

It appears that filmmakers in Hollywood have been listening to concerned doctors and parents as Hollywood is showing safer behaviour, well, at least when it comes to movies aimed at children.

The entertainment industry has improved its portrayals of walking, cycling and boating in movies aimed at children, but half of scenes still show risky behaviour, U.S. researchers found.

Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death among children in Canada and the U.S. Previous studies have found movies marketed to children rarely portrayed safety measures such as wearing seatbelts, so the researchers set out to test if depictions have improved.

Jon Eric Tongren of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and his colleagues reviewed the top-grossing movies rated for general audiences or parental guidance per year from 2003 to 2007.

Green Website for Kids

- Adam Clare

An Indian NGO has started a website directed at kids to educate them about the environment. OneWorld has a great description of the site with some good background too.

Indian NGO Center for Environment Education (CEE) is working to promote awareness and understanding of environmental issues in the country. It has recently introduced a website for children – www.kidsrgreen.org – that allows children to explore and discover environment-related issues.

BA Flight Makes Unexpected Delivery

- Nikki Slabbert

A BA flight from London to Boston made a rather unexpected delivery yesterday as one of its passengers gave birth to a healthy baby mid-flight.

Shortly after take off on Saturday night, one of the BA flight’s female passengers began to experience discomfort and then went into labour. The crew, trained in medical birthing procedures, helped to deliver the baby with the aid of two medical students who were on board.

The flight was diverted to Halifax in Nova Scotia where the woman and baby were taken to a medical centre. The baby was born 6 weeks premature.
Although flight crews are trained to deal with such eventualities, passengers are encouraged to avoid flying after 36 weeks, making this a rare occurrence.

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