From WH Foods:

An Antioxidant Powerhouse

Packed with antioxidant phytonutrients called anthocyanidins, blueberries neutralize free radical damage to the collagen matrix of cells and tissues that can lead to cataracts, glaucoma, varicose veins, hemorrhoids, peptic ulcers, heart disease and cancer. Anthocyanins, the blue-red pigments found in blueberries, improve the integrity of support structures in the veins and entire vascular system. Anthocyanins have been shown to enhance the effects of vitamin C, improve capillary integrity, and stabilize the collagen matrix (the ground substance of all body tissues). They work their protective magic by preventing free-radical damage, inhibiting enzymes from cleaving the collagen matrix, and directly cross-linking with collagen fibers to form a more stable collagen matrix.

Cardioprotective Action

While wine, particularly red wine, is touted as cardioprotective since it is a good source of antioxidant anthocyanins, a recent study found that blueberries deliver 38% more of these free radical fighters. In this study, published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, researchers found that a moderate drink (about 4 ounces) of white wine contained .47 mmol of free radical absorbing antioxidants, red wine provided 2.04 mmol, and a wine made from highbush blueberries delivered 2.42 mmol of these protective plant compounds.

Related posts:

1. Super Fruit: Raspberries
2. Super Fruit : Strawberries
3. Super Fruit: Cherries

10. I feed my child grilled cheese for breakfast.

Well. I guess I am the suck. We have some severely weird eating habits around this house. I took a picture of Kade’s breakfast this morning. Shanghai noodles, cantaloupe and soy yogurt. And this really is the norm in our house. We don’t have forbidden foods at certain times. It actually took Mike years to get used to watching me eat leftovers for breakfast. Pizza, chinese food, roast chicken, anything. Now he doesn’t even blink, but for a long, long time,  I would sit down with my breakfast and he would blink a few times and then ask, “what the HELL are you eating?”

And now I have passed my weirdness on to my children. We have breakfast for supper, supper for breakfast. The first isn’t so weird, I know lots of people who eat eggs/pancakes etc all day,  but is there anyone else who lets their kids eat whatever food (let’s define that as healthy foods within your normal eating day) whenever they want? Like Shanghai noodles or roast beef for breakfast lol?

Related posts:

1. My Breakfast Vs Theirs
2. Winning Breakfast: Fruit Salad
3. Healthy Family Recipe: Vegetable Lasagna

From theage.com

SHORT parents are injecting their healthy children with human growth hormone in a bid to make them taller, despite medical experts warning of serious risks.

Children with normal hormone levels have been given the controversial treatment, which can cost up to $20,000 a year and is often subsidised by taxpayers.

The trend is being led by parents who are giving their children – some as young as eight – daily HGH injections because they fear they will grow up to be short like them.

The hormone should be used only for genuine medical reasons such as growth disorders or dwarfism. It is subsidised on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme only for such conditions, but parents with healthy children are rorting the system.

Professor Ken Ho, chairman of the department of endocrinology at St Vincent’s Hospital, said he knew of numerous short children with normal hormone levels who had been given HGH to boost height.

“People increasingly want their kids to be taller, stronger, more beautiful than somebody else’s and that’s why growth hormones are being sought out,” he said. “Parents don’t want their children to be the shortest in the class. I see a lot of parents who see me for a second opinion about the risks and benefits of this treatment and I tell them their child does not need this.”

Two prominent Melbourne hormone specialists confirmed the trend and said unscrupulous doctors were also spruiking the drug to parents who viewed shortness as a “social disadvantage”. Professor Ho – who said he had been “inundated” with anxious parents given the drug for their children without good reason – warned misuse could have serious side effects.

“Long-term use can lead to disfiguration of the body because it stimulates the growth of all tissues, including bone,” he said.

The revelations come after a Sun-Herald investigation last week revealed the drug is being widely prescribed by anti-ageing clinics to middle-aged men who want to look and feel younger.

Human growth hormone is released by the brain’s pituitary gland and promotes growth during adolescence. The synthetic form of the hormone must be injected daily and costs up to $200 a week.

Professor George Werther, a pediatric endocrinologist at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, said: “The average short kid with short parents may only gain three or four centimetres. That equates to about $30,000 for each centimetre, which is a lot of taxpayers’ money for something fairly questionable.”

He said the hospital provided counselling for families and children affected by short stature.

The head of the Australian Childhood Foundation, Joe Tucci, said parents who used human growth hormone to make healthy children taller could cause psychological and physical harm.

“It gives the child the perception that if they’re short they’re not as good as other children,” he said.

Related posts:

1. Parents Oblivious to Overweight Kids
2. High Stress for the Parents of an Autistic Child
3. Get phthalates out of kids’ toys: Health Canada

Anyways, her new stats are 22.1 lbs and 28.5 inches tall and I am so glad we don’t have to go back for a while. The latest thing this time was that because her weight didn’t keep up with her height, I should be supplementing her with formula at night. Where do I even start ranting with that? There’s not even enough room for my rant. At least Mike snipped at her that Ivy is just fine on breastmilk and organic babyfood and we wouldn’t be doing that anytime soon.

No wonder the rates of obese children are thru the roof…what the HELL would Ivy need with 2 different sources of liquid food? Besides the fact that I nursed a newborn AND a toddler at the same time and they both thrived, all of a sudden, its not enough for one 10 month old? The taps run dry or something? What about the fact that not only is she crawling and beyond active, she’s also been walking holding on to things? What about the fact that she has tall parents? She still gained weight for god’s sake! 2 lbs!

I get so mad that they follow those @#$@#$ growth charts like they are a bible and cause stress to parents. If I didn’t know better, I might have rushed out to buy formula and freaked out that she wasn’t thriving. How many parents have they done that too? Interfered with a healthy, thriving feeding (breast or bottle) relationship only to cram more calories into the babies and worry parents for no reason?

Ugh. The whole of society is obsessed with weight and look where it starts for pete’s sake. First they can’t gain enough and they ask you to cram more calories in your baby, BUT then you are asked to restrict their diets when they are overweight. How about moderate eating habits throughout their lives starting right when they attempt solids?? How about trusting that as long as you provide amply and they eat and refuse what they want, and are gaining some weight, that’s its natures way specific to each little body? All babies are different, heck, look at my two! One mammoth pudgy boy who was 25 lbs at 4 months old, and my girl who’s barely 22lbs at 10 months. SAME FOOD SOURCE PEOPLE!!! Its not like it was chocolate milk for Kade and skim for Ivy. Different kids! Get over it! Burn the charts!

If you’re still reading, thanks for hanging in there LOL! I’m done. Just think,no more vax visits and rants until 18 months. And least they didn’t harass me about delaying the MMR shot and not getting the chicken pox one…that’s new.

Now that I soap-boxed again on this issue,  The Times article:

THOUSANDS of obese and overweight babies, fattened by mothers on medical advice, are to be identified by National Health Service charts.

Health experts say the growth measurements, introduced at the start of this month, should end the “severe cultural problem” of encouraging babies to put on a lot of weight too quickly.

For the first time the tables, drawn up by the World Health Organisation, are based entirely on the rate of growth of breastfed babies, which tend to put on weight more slowly than those given formula milk in their first year.

The figures used until now have been based mainly on formula-fed babies. This has meant breastfeeding mothers have been wrongly told to “feed up” their infants, putting them at risk of obesity. This problem afflicts many bottle-fed babies.

Tim Cole, professor of medical statistics at the Institute of Child Health at University College London, and one of the experts who has adapted the charts for Britain, said: “We have this severe cultural problem, which is that babies are expected to grow fast.

“What this chart is trying to do is to suggest that babies shouldn’t be growing so fast and that they shouldn’t be as big.”

Cole added: “The way breastfed babies grow will now become the norm. With the previous charts a breastfed baby could be growing perfectly normally but would appear to the health visitor not to be growing as fast as the charts recommended, so there might have been pressure to wean early [on to solid foods or formula milk].

“Thin babies will [now] not appear to be so thin and fat babies will appear to be more fat. The fat babies are likely to be formula fed, growing very fast and developing problems with obesity.”

Cole has been advised by paediatricians that some obese babies are twice average weight by their first birthday.

Rapid weight gain in the first nine months of a baby girl’s life could make her more likely to be overweight later in childhood, according to research by Bristol and Cambridge universities.

The Child Growth Foundation, which has been campaigning for the charts, says breastfed babies are, on average, 1lb lighter than those fed solely on formula milk at 12 months. Tam Fry, who chairs the foundation, said: “When babies are being overfed this will become more noticeable.”

Fewer than one in two mothers still breastfeed at six weeks and this falls to 25% at six months. Fewer than 1% of mothers follow official advice to breastfeed exclusively for the first six months of an infant’s life.

A Department of Health spokeswoman said: “The new charts will not only provide more accurate data but will also help professionals and parents to identify early signs of overweight or obesity and provide support.”

Related posts:

1. Breastmilk Contains Stem Cells
2. What are the benefits of breastfeeding to mom?
3. Heavy Infant Denied Health Insurance

Treating mental-health problems in children entering school may help prevent victimization from bullying, say researchers who tracked 400 Canadian children.

In the May/June issue of the journal Child Development, researchers said they found children who entered first grade with signs of depression and anxiety or excessive aggression were at risk of being chronically victimized by their classmates by third grade.

“Children’s early mental-health problems can set the stage for abuse by their peers,” said psychology Prof. Bonnie Leadbeater of the University of Victoria, who led the study.

Just as some children need extra help learning to read when they lag behind their peers, young children with mental-health problems also show signs that they can’t manage the “complex social world of elementary school.”

“Treating children’s mental-health problems may go a long way toward reducing bullying,” Leadbeater added.

In the study, teachers were asked to report on the children’s symptoms of depression, anxiety and displays of physical aggression. Researchers returned at the end of the first, second and third grades to ask the children and their teachers to report on the same issues.

While 73 per cent showed few symptoms of depression and anxiety over the three years, seven per cent showed high levels throughout the course of the study. The other 20 per cent showed moderate symptoms at first that increased over time.

Children who were more prone to be aggressive when they started first grade were more likely to be victimized by their peers, perhaps in retaliation for their own acts of aggression, the researchers said.

The research was supported by grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Via CBC

Related posts:

1. Heavy Youngsters at Risk For Asthma Symptoms
2. Do Siblings Keep Depression At Bay?
3. New Study Finds Differences in Way Autistic Children Learn

John Gibson says such experience does not prepare children for adult life and schools should challenge this.

Playing conkers and mending bikes helped children in later life, he told the ISA’s annual conference.

Recent research suggests five to 16-year-olds are spending up to six hours a day online or watching television.

Mr Gibson, who is head of Stoke College in Suffolk, said “playing out” as a child and taking part in activities such as putting an oily chain back on a bike, or playing conkers, exposed children to emotions such as disappointment which would prepare them for adulthood.

In his speech to the conference, he said: “When your life is lived through images constructed by a technical genius from Silicon Valley played on a high definition screen I just feel it will be more difficult to experience those important rehearsals for adult life”.

‘Comfortable’

He went on: “When William Wordsworth wrote 150 years ago that ’shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy’ I believed he was talking mainly about school?

“But today’s prison-house is just as likely to be the home, a seductive, comfortable prison for boys and girls whose nimble fingers are adept at working their mobiles and computer games, but have never used them to play conkers.”

He told ISA members – heads of independent schools in England and Wales – that they should offer children a diversity and excellence of experience to challenge the culture of technology in which they live outside school.

In doing so, they should always pay attention to assessing risk, while preparing children for the world they would grow up in, he added.

In a survey by Childwise research agency last autumn, 1,800 children were asked how much time they spent either watching television, on the internet or playing on games consoles.

The survey suggested the children were spending 2.7 hours a day on average watching television, 1.5 hours on the internet and 1.3 hours on games consoles.

A casualty of this amount of screen time had been reading, it suggested. The children questioned were spending just over half an hour a day reading.

In particular, older boys were resistant to reading, with 42% of 11 to 16-year-olds saying they never read books for pleasure.

However playing sport still appeared to be a major part of young people’s lives, representing nearly five hours per week.

Via the BBC

Related posts:

1. Kids Who Eat What They Watch
2. TV Time For Children in Daycare/Dayhomes Surprisingly High
3. Kids Hungry for More Bedtime Stories

Related posts:

1. Strawberry Spinach Salad Recipe
2. The All-Time Favorite Tutti Frutti Salad
3. Fruit and Curry Chicken Salad

- As an antioxidant food containing ellagic acid, raspberries help prevent unwanted damage to cell membranes and other structures in the body by neutralizing free radicals.

- Raspberries possess almost 50% higher antioxidant activity than strawberries, three times that of kiwis, and ten times the antioxidant activity of tomatoes, shows research conducted in the Netherlands and published in the journal BioFactors.

-In addition to their unique phytonutrient content, raspberries are filled with traditional nutrients, primarily in the antioxidant and B vitamin categories. Raspberries emerged from our nutrient ranking system as an excellent source of manganese and vitamin C, two critical antioxidant nutrients that help protect the body’s tissue from oxygen-related damage. They also qualified as a good source of riboflavin, folate, niacin, magnesium, potassium and copper. Coupled with this strong B vitamin and mineral content, raspberries qualified as “excellent” in terms of dietary fiber. This combination of nutrients makes raspberries a great fruit choice for having minimal impact on blood sugars.

Plus they are darn tasty with the added bonus that my children love them.

Related posts:

1. Super Fruit: Cherries
2. Super Fruit: Blueberries
3. Super Vegetable: Sweet Potatoes

Original Article Here

It appears there may be a partial flu shot mismatch again this year, with early data from Canada, the United States and Britain suggesting the vaccine component meant to protect against influenza B is not a match for the B viruses causing the most disease.

Predicting which family of influenza B viruses will dominate in a coming year – and therefore should be covered by the flu shot – is a challenge that has defied the experts in five of the past seven flu seasons, at least as far as disease patterns in North America are concerned.

The ongoing problem has prompted exploration of the idea that future generations of flu shots should be reformulated to add a second B component to a vaccine that currently protects against one family of B viruses and the two influenza A subtypes, H3N2 and H1N1.

Scientists from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control are working on a cost-benefit analysis of such a move, and met yesterday to begin going over the pros and cons. They plan to present their findings next month to the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates vaccines in the United States.

The flu shot for the current season has already been manufactured. So any recommended changes would affect only future batches of the vaccine, which must be reformulated almost every year because viruses mutate so rapidly.

Until about eight years ago, only one family or lineage of B viruses circulated globally at one time. But in 2001 a second emerged from Asia and the two – known as B/Yamagata and B/Victoria – have co-circulated since. Each year one or the other has been dominant, though there is no clear pattern of how or when they alternate.

Because the viruses are from distinct lineages, it is thought that a vaccine made to protect against viruses from one would offer little or no protection against viruses from the other. However, ongoing Canadian studies show that isn’t always the case.

“All is not lost if there is that lineage-level mismatch, because in the seasons that we have monitored it, we have – at least so far – shown that there has been some cross-protection,” says Danuta Skowronski, a flu expert with the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control.

Some years, that cross-protection can be reasonably high, Dr. Skowronski said, though in other years mismatched B vaccine appears to provide little protection.

This year’s flu vaccine was designed to protect against B/Yamagata viruses. But in Canada, the United States and Britain so far this season, B/Victoria viruses have been responsible for the majority of confirmed flu B cases. It is still early in the season, though, and patterns could change.

“The activity is, I think, beginning and it’s looking like … the majority of B isolates so far have been mismatched,” says Allison McGeer, an infectious-diseases expert at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital.

Related posts:

1. Vaccinate kids to control H1N1 flu: researchers
2. Kid’s Flu Shot May Protect Community at Large
3. Rise in Number of Children’s Deaths From H1N1 in States

But what Dr Mark Cregan is excited about right now is the promise that his discovery could be the start of many more exciting revelations about the potency of breast milk.

He believes that it not only meets all the nutritional needs of a growing infant but contains key markers that guide his or her development into adulthood.

“We already know how breast milk provides for the baby’s nutritional needs, but we are only just beginning to understand that it probably performs many other functions,” says Dr Cregan, a molecular biologist at The University of Western Australia.

He says that, in essence, a new mother’s mammary glands take over from the placenta to provide the development guidance to ensure a baby’s genetic destiny is fulfilled.

“It is setting the baby up for the perfect development,” he says. “We already know that babies who are breast fed have an IQ advantage and that there’s a raft of other health benefits. Researchers also believe that the protective effects of being breast fed continue well into adult life.

“The point is that many mothers see milks as identical – formula milk and breast milk look the same so they must be the same. But we know now that they are quite different and a lot of the effects of breast milk versus formula don’t become apparent for decades. Formula companies have focussed on matching breast milk’s nutritional qualities but formula can never provide the developmental guidance.”

It was Dr Cregan’s interest in infant health that led him to investigate the complex cellular components of human milk. “I was looking at this vast complexity of cells and I thought, ‘No one knows anything about them’.”

His hunch was that if breast milk contains all these cells, surely it has their precursors, too?

His team cultured cells from human breast milk and found a population that tested positive for the stem cell marker, nestin. Further analysis showed that a side population of the stem cells were of multiple lineages with the potential to differentiate into multiple cell types. This means the cells could potentially be “reprogrammed” to form many types of human tissue.

He presented his research at the end of January to 200 of the world’s leading experts in the field at the International Conference of the Society for Research on Human Milk and Lactation in Perth.

“We have shown these cells have all the physical characteristics of stem cells. What we will do next is to see if they behave like stem cells,” he says.

If so, they promise to provide researchers with an entirely ethical means of harvesting stem cells for research without the debate that has dogged the harvesting of cells from embryos.

Further research on immune cells, which have also been found in breast milk and have already been shown to survive the baby’s digestive process, could provide a pathway to developing targets to beat certain viruses or bacteria.

Related posts:

1. ‘Feeding up’ of babies to be curbed
2. What are the benefits of breastfeeding to mom?
3. Childhood Obesity Could Shorten Children’s Lives