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MISSION, KS--(Marketwire -05/03/12)- (Family Features) As schools are hard at work revamping lunch menus in line with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) new school lunch guidelines, chocolate milk has already undergone a makeover that schools, parents and kids can all feel good about.

Dr. Keith Ayoob, RD, a nationally-recognized child nutrition expert, highlights the biggest changes under the new guidelines:

More colorful fruits and vegetables. Both fruits and vegetables must be served every day of the week, and there is now a weekly requirement for specific colors of vegetables. Previously schools only had to offer either fruits or vegetables.

Whole grains will be required. While encouraged in the past, schools now must offer whole-grain rich foods. Schools are really looking at how to ensure foods are nutritious, but also appealing to kids. It's a challenge, but one that schools across the nation are focused on.

Schools are paying attention to portions. Calorie limits will be enforced based on the age of children being served to ensure proper portion size. New menus will be increasingly focused on reducing saturated fat, trans fats and sodium.

Nutrient-rich milk is emphasized. Along with low-fat and fat free white milk, now all the chocolate milk served for school lunch will be fat free.

While the school lunch menu has only recently changed, school chocolate milk has been undergoing changes for the past five years. The nation's milk processors have been hard at work to lower the calories and sugar in school flavored milk, while continuing to deliver a nutritious and delicious drink kids love. School flavored milk now has 38 percent less added sugar than just five years ago and on average, just 31 calories more than white milk. The majority have fewer than 150 calories per serving.

Flavored milk is the most popular choice in school lunch rooms, and kids drink less milk and get fewer nutrients when it's taken away. Whether flavored or white, milk has 9 essential nutrients, including calcium, vitamin D and potassium, which are all "nutrients of concern" that most kids fail to get enough of. Many kids are falling short of the recommended milk each day, and when they skip milk at lunch, they're not likely to make up for it the rest of their day.

Dr. Ayoob has some tips to help parents and kids make the most of school lunches:

Learn more at http://www.milkatschools.com.

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School Lunches Get a Makeover

In the series, Worth Pitching? Ill describe research Ive come across in the course of science journalism and whether or not I pitched it as a story. All research may be worthwhile, but what might the general public want to read about?

Regarding pitching stories, here are two pitches of mine that became stories in The New York Times, which recently appeared in The Open Notebook, a site that seeks to tell the story behind the best science stories. You can compare and contrast the pitches and the final published stories to see how the pitches expanded and altered during the editing process.

When it came to At Trading Crossroads, Permafrost Yields Siberian Secrets (pitch here), theres a funny story here. I pitched this story on Siberian mummies at the end of 2002 to the science editor at the Times at the time, and she accepted, on the reasonable condition that I get a photo of the mummies to accompany the story. The article then languished for nearly a year because the Russian researcher didnt send over a photo. I finally went to Russia to shoot pictures of the mummies (an ordeal in itself, involving buying a visa, flying into a snowstorm, and a government escort to a vodka bar and Scottish ballet) only to find out the mummies had been moved back to Siberia. However, the researchers did have a CD-ROM of pix of the mummies, which raises two questions: a) Why not just send me the CD-ROM instead of me flying out? b) If theyre files on the CD-ROM, why not just email me the pix? Still, the trip was worth it, as a lot of matters were best discussed with the researchers face to face, given my non-existent Russian and their good but imperfect English. This pitch is unusually long I was still feeling out the Times at that point, and I was nervous pitching to the Times, being only in my second year as a freelance.

For Looking This Way and That, and Learning to Adapt to the World (pitch here), the pitch on this piece for the Times was much shorter than my pitch on Siberian mummies, and is of the usual length of my pitches for them now. I figure you want about four paragraphs of story to start with, to show that you have storytelling chops and that theres an article worth investigating there. I then give a paragraph explicitly selling why this story works for readers. The two paragraphs after the asterisk are replies to the editor on questions as to how timely this research is, what has been published on it, and unique scientific findings associated with the work.

You can email me regarding Worth Pitching? at toohardforscience@gmail.com.

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Worth Pitching? Two pitches that made it to The New York Times

Only a few weeks ago I looked at a study on fast food consumption and depression, and only a few days ago I talked about a brand new study looking at high fat diets and protection from heart attack damage. And today, weve got another study on high fat diet, this time in mice, and depressive-like behavior. What is the effect of a high fat diet? Well, it appears to be getting more complicated with each new study.

But it this study, at least, it looks like diet-induced obesity might produce depressive-like effects in mice. But how the diet is doing that is not so well defined.

Sharma and Fulton. Diet-induced obesity promotes depressive-like behaviour that is associated with neural adaptations in brain reward circuitry International Journal of Obesity, 2012.

(Source)

Several studies in humans have found a correlation between obesity and the development of depression. But its important to keep in mind that correlation is not causation. Many people who become obese also have other things going on (socioeconomic status, family history, comorbid disorders) which can influence the development of depression. In order to determine if obesity itself is causing depression, you first have to deliberately cause obesity in a controlled population.

And this is where mice come in. Using a specialty high fat and high sugar diet, Sharma and Fulton fed up a set of mice for 12 weeks, until they were significantly fatter than control mice. They then looked at behavioral tests for anxiety and depression.

(Click to embiggen)

What you can see above are different behavioral tests. The top two panels represent the elevated plus maze, a plus shaped design with two open arms and two closed arms. Mice prefer to stay in the closed arms of the maze, because they prefer darkness and small spaces. The more anxious a mouse is, the more time he will spend in the closed arms. In this case, the mice fed on a high-fat diet spent more time in the closed arms of the maze.

In the second set of bars, the open field, the findings were similar. The mouse is placed in a large open field. He will usually stay out of the center, preferring the more protected edges and corners. The more anxious a mouse is, the more he will stay to the edges of the field. Again, the high-fat diet mice stayed on the edges more than normal mice suggesting that high-fat diets make mice more anxious.

However, anxiety tests are not depression. For their main depression measure (the bottom set of bars), the authors used the forced swim test, where a mouse is placed in a bucket of water and swims for a few minutes. After a while it will realize it cant get out and begin to float, a sign of behavioral despair. Mice given antidepressants will swim more and float less, and mice showing depressive-like behavior will float more. In this case, the high fat diet mice floated more than control mice, which the authors suggest is depressive like behavior.

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High fat diets and depression: a look in mice

New research suggests that there could be health hazards associated with consuming excessive amounts of beta-carotene .

This antioxidant is a naturally occurring pigment that gives color to foods such as carrots, sweet potatoes and certain greens. It also converts to vitamin A, and foods and supplements are the only sources for this essential nutrient.

But scientists at Ohio State University have found that certain molecules that derive from beta-carotene have an opposite effect in the body: They actually block some actions of vitamin A, which is critical to human vision, bone and skin health, metabolism and immune function.

Because these molecules derive from beta-carotene, researchers predict that a large amount of this antioxidant is accompanied by a larger amount of these anti-vitamin-A molecules, as well.

Vitamin A provides its health benefits by activating hundreds of genes. This means that if compounds contained in a typical source of the vitamin are actually lowering its activity instead of promoting its benefits, too much beta-carotene could paradoxically result in too little vitamin A.

The findings also might explain why, in a decades-old clinical trial, more people who were heavily supplemented with beta-carotene ended up with lung cancer than did research participants who took no beta-carotene at all. The trial was ended early because of that unexpected outcome.

The scientists arent recommending against eating foods high in beta-carotene, and they are continuing their studies to determine what environmental and biological conditions are most likely to lead to these molecules production.

We determined that these compounds are in foods, theyre present under normal circumstances, and theyre pretty routinely found in blood in humans, and therefore they may represent a dark side of beta-carotene, said Earl Harrison, Deans Distinguished Professor of Human Nutrition at Ohio State and lead author of the study. These materials definitely have anti-vitamin-A properties, and they could basically disrupt or at least affect the whole body metabolism and action of vitamin A. But we have to study them further to know for sure.

The study is scheduled for publication in the May 4, 2012, issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Previous research has already established that when beta-carotene is metabolized, it is broken in half by an enzyme, which produces two vitamin A molecules.

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Potential Dark Side To Diets High In Beta-Carotene

Weve all become familiar with Somaya Reece, an aspiring artist & model, during the last two seasons of Love & Hip Hop . From her outspoken personality to her by any means necessary approach to her music career, Somaya quickly became a regular topic of conversation. At 510, and often dressed in unconventional clothing, it was hard to miss the Los Angeles native, however, after signing with a new agency, and doing some personal evaluation, Somaya decided it was time to make a change.

Last Fall, she quietly began undergoing a make-under. She toned down her style, changed her eating habits and then made headlines when she announced that shed be undergoing a breast reduction. The results, revealed last week on her Instagram, were more than anyone could have ever imagined. Last week, Somaya spoke to us by phone from her LA home where shes still recovering to talk about what she calls the best decision shes ever made, and shared her diet plan for those who are interested in losing weight and getting fit.

Check out our interview below

When did you first start the weight loss plan? Id been trying to lose weight for a long time. I first started losing weight last Fall.

This was your first battle with your weight, right? Ive been dealing with weight issues for years. I used to be really super thin. When I first started modeling, I had a team of sharks around me, who didnt have my best interest in mind. I had an agency that told me I had drop a lot of weight.

So youve felt the outside pressures to be thin, for a while now? When I was on my MySpace, people didnt understand I was starving to be thin. I wasnt eating. At one point I was a size 0, and Im 510. I had a lot of really bad people advising me and I got sick. I collapsed on a set of a commercial. I was rushed to the hospital and treated for malnutrition and low iron. Finally the doctor told me, if I continued to not eat, I would die.

And thats when you started gaining weight. How did that make you feel? It made me angry, and finally I just said if no ones gonna love me as I am, then is this business really worth it. So I started eating normally and I got thick, which is how my body naturally is.

So cut to years later, and youre on Love & Hip Hop. Did you start to feel pressure to lose weight again? Its funny because I actually felt resistance to being thin. Now I had a team that kept telling me thick is in. And coming to New York was a big piece of it, being in LA its hard to stay in shape out here. Youre in a car all day. Working on the show, I was always doing stuff and the hustle is so fast paced, I was struggling to keep up. I had to switch up what I was doing.

Where did you start? With my diet. My schedule was so crazy that I wasnt eating, and then by the time I did eat, I would just grab anything. And finally I realized I wasnt getting enough calories to lose weight. So I had to start becoming super strict about what I was eating, and how often. I started setting a schedule, making sure I ate every three hours, which is harder than you might think.

And did you change what you were eating? Absolutely. I started eating clean. No fried foods, no junk food. Lots of vegetables, fruit, lean proteins. And I had to get a hold of portion sizes. I started drinking protein shakes, especially in the morning because Im not big on breakfast.

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Bitchie Exclusive: Somaya Reece Talks Diets & The Breast Reduction That Changed Her Life

The Volumetrics Eating Plan, a new weight-loss trend sweeping the nation, is winning people over with its "eat more" agenda.

Unlike diets that revolve around depriving their followers, the Volumetrics eating plan doesn't hold you back when craving a certain type of food.

Its creator, nutritionist Barbara Rolls, PhD, argues that limiting your diet too severely won't work in the long run. You'll just wind up hungry and unhappy and go back to your old ways, according to WebMD.

It's all a matter of calorie intake, says the doctor.

"By choosing foods that have fewer calories per bite, your portion size grows, but your overall calorie count decreases," Rolls, author of the new book "The Ultimate Volumetrics Diet," told CNN. "So you end up with a satisfying amount of food."

Rolls, a professor of nutritional sciences at the Pennsylvania State University, has spent the last 20 years studying the science of satiety -- that feeling of fullness at the end of a meal - and the affects that it has on hunger and obesity.

According to the Rolls's research, the amount of food that we take in has a greater effect on how full we feel than the number of calories in the food.

So when speaking in terms of the Volumetrics eating plan, the trick of it is to fill up on foods that aren't full of calories.

A guideline that makes the Volumetrics eating plan so popular with the general public is that that it doesn't ban food types, as many other diet plans do.

And while Rolls doesn't distinguish between "good food" and "bad food," she does urge people to evaluate foods based on their energy density -- a concept that is crucial to the diet, according to Jason Martuscello, a research specialist in Exercise Science and Nutrition at The University of Tampa.

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Volumetrics Eating Plan: Why This Dense-Food Diet Will Work For You [VIDEO]

By John Naish

PUBLISHED: 18:23 EST, 23 April 2012 | UPDATED: 19:03 EST, 23 April 2012

Yo-yo nightmares: However hard we may try, research increasingly suggests that diets actually encourage our bodies to make us fatter

Michelle Underwood knows only too well the agony of failed diets. The 36-year-old mother-of-three from Woking, Surrey, has seen her weight yo-yo from 11st to 19st repeatedly over the past decade, as a succession of diets initially worked, then failed spectacularly leaving her heavier and more desperate than ever.

Michelle blames herself for her serial dieting failures, saying she lacks willpower and has an appetite for the wrong food.

Last week saw a high-profile example of this common problem, when broadcaster Jenni Murray revealed in the Mail how she has piled back on the 5st she lost last year on the controversial Dukan diet.

She had dropped from 19st to 14st, with the intention of losing another two. But all the hard work came undone in a matter of five weeks on an extended holiday, she said, followed by a diet-free Christmas.

Murray has now joined WeightWatchers and believes she has finally found a diet that works for her.

One must admire her optimism and wish her luck. But scientific evidence increasingly points to a far deeper problem that confronts dieters: cutting out calories changes your metabolism and brain, so your body hoards fat and your mind magnifies food cravings into an obsession.

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Research shows trying to lose weight alters your brain and hormones so you're doomed to pile it on again

MISSION, KS--(Marketwire -04/19/12)- (Family Features) According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in the past 20 years, the diets of most Americans have changed, consuming too many calories and too few nutrients. This type of diet leads to weight gain -- 60 percent of Americans are overweight or obese -- and 9 out of 10 Americans fall short of many essential nutrients in their diets. With on-the-go lifestyles, many people find it difficult to eat right, exercise regularly and keep their diet in check.

Dr. Melina Jampolis, author of "The Calendar Diet: A Month by Month Guide to Losing Weight While Living Your Life," knows that even small, consistent steps can lead to big changes over time. "Eating a well balanced diet, keeping to a fitness routine and maintaining one's weight are all tactics to support a healthy lifestyle. As a doctor specializing in nutrition and weight loss, I've been helping people navigate life's challenges using a motivational and simple, year-long approach." The "Calendar Diet," shows you how to maintain a healthy lifestyle month-by-month, allowing you to cut calories without depriving yourself.

Dr. Melina shares the following recommendations:

Eat wholesome foods"A menu filled with seasonal fruits and vegetables will give you a big nutritional boost," suggests Dr. Melina. Vegetables, she explains, are packed with fiber and water, and are low in fat, so they decrease the calorie density of your diet, while boosting overall nutrition.

Opt for lean protein in your diet as well, which helps control hunger, stabilize blood sugar levels, support your metabolism, as well as build and protect muscle. Add moderate amounts of "good" fats -- found in nuts, seeds, avocados and olive oil -- to keep calories under control and support the absorption of fat soluble vitamins like A, D, E and K.

Supplement your diet"When you reduce calories, you reduce nutrient intake. I recommend dietary supplements to my patients who are restricting calories and who want to achieve optimal health," says Dr. Melina. "When choosing supplements, it is important to go with a reputable brand such as Nature Made," says Dr. Melina, "which has rigorous quality control standards in place to ensure what is on the label is in the bottle." Dr. Melina also recommends looking for products carrying the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) Verified Dietary Supplement mark, as a way to ensure the product has met stringent quality criteria for purity and potency. Nature Made was the first company to obtain the USP Verified Dietary Supplement mark for many of its products.

For most of her patients, especially those who are overweight or obese, live in northern latitudes, or are at an age greater than 65, Dr. Melina recommends taking a vitamin D supplement as this key nutrient plays a supporting role in bone, heart and immune health. "To determine if you have low vitamin D levels, speak with your doctor about having your blood levels of vitamin D checked," says Dr. Melina, who recommends adults take 1000 to 2000 International Units (IU) of Vitamin D3 daily to fulfill their vitamin D requirement.

Up your activityAlways speak with your doctor before beginning a new workout regimen. Make sure you get the recommended amount of activity into your week. "The key is to gradually increase your activity levels," says Dr. Melina. "By switching up your routine every month, you can continually challenge yourself, improve fitness levels and work major muscle groups in different ways to prevent plateaus."

For more information about vitamin D supplements, visit http://www.naturemade.com, and to order "The Calendar Diet," visit http://www.drmelina.com.

About Family Features Editorial SyndicateThis and other food and lifestyle content can be found at http://www.editors.familyfeatures.com. Family Features is a leading provider of free food and lifestyle content for use in print and online publications. Register with no obligation to access a variety of formatted and unformatted features, accompanying photos, and automatically updating Web content solutions.

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Realistic and Livable Tips for a Healthy Lifestyle

Sunday is Earth day, a reminder to continue striving to make environmentally responsible choices throughout our lives, including our diets.

Trying to incorporate more products that have been sustainably produced and packaged in recycled, recyclable and/or biodegradable containers can have a significant impact on our environment as well as our personal health and wellness.

But being eco-friendly doesnt mean you have to start grinding up egg shells and food scraps to fertilize your garden, and for some, even the idea of starting a garden, or riding a bike to work on a regular basis can seem unrealistic to maintain as daily routines.

So here are 10 simple strategies you can easily fit into a busy schedule and start implementing today to reduce, reuse, and recycle and improve your health.

1. Keep it local

Speak with any expert on eco-friendly living, and buying local tops every list.

The average food item on your plate has traveled 1,500 to 3,000 miles, requiring an enormous amount of energy and producing a significant amount of pollution, says Sean Miller, Education Director at Earth Day Network in Washington, D.C. Locally produced goods, in comparison, travel 150 to 300 miles on average, which is one of the key reasons that its so important to buy local.

There can be a nutritional benefit to buying local, as well. Farmers can let produce ripen more fully before harvest, and more time spent on the branch or vine means more time receiving nutrients from the soil.

Locally-grown produce hasnt been in transit for days, which means that its probably been exposed to less oxygen, light, and time, all of which can deplete produce of vitamins and phytochemicals.

Your options for buying local arent limited to just farmers markets. Local seafood, dairy, and produce is available in many local supermarkets.

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Earth Day fitness guide: 10 ways to save the planet and improve your health

For many people in the United States, French fries and breakfast cereal count as vegetables. And it shows with television programs like The Biggest Loser, healthy living programs in schools, and weight-loss challenges in the workplace, its evident that malnutrition is at epidemic proportions in this country.

But its not just obesity thats capturing attention; the fact is, most Americans are struggling just as much with undernourishment and nutritional deficiencies.

Agricultural producers and growers like to pride themselves on feeding the world, but what are they feeding? According to Philipp Simon, a geneticist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a horticulture professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, 13 percent of the worlds population is undernourished, 30 percent are iron-deficient, and 2 percent have a vitamin A deficiency. And its not just third-world countries most Americans are chronically deficient in vitamins A and C as well as calcium, magnesium, and potassium. Consumers also struggle to get enough fiber, folate, and vitamin E in their diets.

These are all nutrients that can only come from the diet, and many come solely in the form of plants, such as vitamin C in orange juice. Encouraging consumers to eat more fruits and vegetables is one way to approach the problem; another way is to boost the nutritional content in the foods that people are eating. This has led to fortifying foods in some cases, as in bread and cereals, and to improving horticultural practices in other cases, such as adding selenium to the soil to increase selenium levels in garlic. Another strategy has been in breeding nutrition into plants.

Carotene and Carrots

Researchers have been successful in breeding nutrition into plants in many cases, such as increased protein into maize, iron into beans, zinc into rice and wheat, and vitamin A into maize, sweet potato, and some cucumber varieties. The bulk of Simons work has been with carrots, which contains the most vitamin A of any fruit or vegetable.

Even though, carrots have historically been one of the few crops to have increased its nutritional content the average carrot contained 60 parts per million (ppm) of vitamin A in the 1950s, to 90 ppm in the 1970s, to 130 ppm in the 1990s carrots continue to have potential, up to 300 ppm. So, theres a lot of opportunity for breeding nutrition into crops, Simon added.

An advantage to breeding vitamin A, also known as carotene, into carrots is that its easy for the consumer to choose the more nutritional carrot the deeper the orange color, the more vitamin A it has.

There are challenges, however, with getting the research out into the field. As with all crops, there is a pull between quality and quantity. Some varieties have more nutritional value than others. Some yield better. Some are more flavorful. Some are more convenient. Some have a longer shelf life.

Higher carotene content generally imparts no economic benefit to growers, Simon said. Future work will focus more on marrying qualities that growers are looking for, such as yield and shelf life, and what consumers want, such as flavor and convenience, with nutritional content.

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Target: A Healthy Harvest

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