July 2018

This NPR story shares recently released study supporting what we know in our bones: humans thrive with connection to nature. Read more here: Replacing vacant lots with green spaces eases depression . This study is hot off the press: " Effect of Greening Vacant Land on Mental Health of Community-Dwelling Adults: A cluster randomized trial. " "The impact was strongest for residents of poorer neighborhoods — they showed at least a 27.5 percent reduction in the prevalence of depression." "The...

A toddler's self-regulation—the ability to change behavior in different social situations—may predict whether he or she will be obese come kindergarten, but the connection appears to be much different for girls than for boys. Self-regulation is something all children must develop, and poorer self-control in childhood is associated with worse adult health, economic and social outcomes. However, a new study from The Ohio State University found that more self-regulation may not necessarily...

Most people who struggle with weight and food have probably suspected that trauma in the past plays a role. In this new video, Anna Runkle (the Crappy Childhood Fairy) interviews Mary Giuliani, who explains what we now know about childhood adversity, food and obesity. She shares how she lost 160 pounds (and has kept it off for 15 years), and teaches ways to calm emotions (and the brain) and face the triggers that drive overeating in the first place (READ MORE AND WATCH THE VIDEO HERE).

“We feel that apolitical and ‘color-blind’ approaches to addressing food inequity fly in the face of the statistics, which clearly show that Black people are disproportionately impacted in a negative way by food apartheid, environmental racism, and discrimination in planning and public policy,” says Brown. “To ignore these realities in [so-called] food justice work is a gross miscalculation at best.” ...

Summer is upon us, which means an increase in street crime and ice cream consumption. However, neither one causes the other; they are both highly correlatedwith summer’s heat, which brings more people out of their homes and onto the streets, where some eat ice cream and some get mugged. Correlation is not causality. Here are two more facts to ponder: American children take lots of standardized, machine-scored, multiple-choice tests, and they are getting fatter. Is this just another...