Covenant PDHPE

So you've decided to eat healthier, give up high calorie foods, overly sweet snacks and sugary sodas. To quench your thirst when enjoying your lunch of lean turkey breast on whole wheat with pesto, you forgo the familiar red can and reach instead for your juice drink, contented in the knowledge that you are doing something good for your body. Or are you?

Cupcakes may be addictive, just like cocaine. A growing body of medical research at leading universities and government laboratories suggests that processed foods and sugary drinks made by the likes of PepsiCo Inc. and Kraft Foods Inc. (KFT) aren't simply unhealthy. They can hijack the brain in ways that resemble addictions to cocaine, nicotine and other drugs.

If you are trying to eat as healthy as the government wants you to, it's going to cost you: at least $7.28 a week extra, that is. A recent update of U.S. nutritional guidelines -- what used to be known as the food pyramid and is now called "My Plate" -- calls on Americans to eat more fresh foods containing potassium, dietary fiber, vitamin D and calcium.

PRECURSORY signs of cardiovascular disease can be seen in children as young as 12 who have a high intake of sugary drinks, Sydney researchers have found, which could have implications for the rates of the disease in the future. While narrowed blood vessels inside the eye are a known precursor to cardiovascular disease in adults, researchers from the Westmead Millennium Institute for medical research have for the first time looked at the link between carbohydrates, which includes sugars, and the retinal health of children.

It's a message that's got louder over the last few years: exercise doesn't work for weight loss. There was the 2009 Time magazine cover story The Myth about Exercise featuring a photo of a woman pounding a treadmill, her eyes trained on a cream-topped cupcake. It symbolised the story's thrust: research suggesting exercise won't help weight loss because it makes us eat more to make up for the kilojoules we burn. It's a message repeated recently in the new book Big Fat Lies in which author David Gillespie - a lawyer - describes exercise for weight loss as 'pointless'. But is it really true?

That's how much longer adult Ontarians would live, on average, if they could collectively overcome five unhealthy habits: smoking, excess alcohol consumption, poor diet, sedentary behaviour and stressing out. That is the conclusion of a new report from the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and Public Health Ontario.