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990lb man Jose Luis Garza dies after bedroom rescue drama
A vastly overweight Mexican man was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital after emergency workers were forced to demolish his bedroom wall to take him for treatment.
Jose Luis Garza, 47, weighed 992lb (450kg) and had been bedridden for four months. His condition deteriorated at the weekend as he struggled to breathe and eat, and he lost his battle for life as he was driven to hospital on the back of a friend's lorry
Mr Garza lived in Juarez in northern Mexico and was a friend of Manuel Uribe, the world's fattest man and a fellow Mexican who lived about one hour away in Monterrey.
Mr Garza had said that his overeating became out of control after the deaths of both his parents within two weeks of each other at the start of this year. He was inspired by Mr Uribe — whose record weight of 1,235lb earned him a place in the 2007 Guinness World Records — to follow his lead in going on television to plead for help in tackling his weight problem.
Mr Uribe reportedly tried to help Mr Garza by sending him kiwis, grapefruit, pears and a protein supplement.
Family members blamed healthworkers for failing to take Mr Garza to hospital before he became critically ill. "if he had received support at the time he asked for it, he would still be with us," said his brother, Pedro Garza.
Healthworkers said that there was little they could do. "The attention he would have received at a hospital would have been the same he received at home," said Julio Cesar Cano, spokesman for the Nuevo Leon state health department. "Moving a patient of that magnitude is very difficult."
About 150 friends and family waited for more than four hours at a cemetery in the Monterrey suburb of Guadalupe while carpenters built a special coffin for Mr Garza's burial.
"The family wanted to cremate him but there wasn't an adequate oven for someone his size," Maribel Cantu, a funeral home worker, said. "He is the biggest man we have buried."
Mr Uribe announced last week that he was to marry his long-term girlfriend Claudia Solis in a civil ceremony this month, after slimming down to around 41stone (571lb) from his peak weight in 2006, when he tipped the scales at 94 stone.
A former car spares dealer, Mr Uribe has been bedridden since 2001. He drew worldwide attention when he pleaded for help on television in January 2006. Afterwards, Italian and Spanish doctors visited and offered him gastric bypass surgery, but Mr Uribe chose instead to accept help from Mexican nutritionists working with the Zone diet. He said he would stick to that diet until he reached his goal weight of 18st.
The television programme, World's Heaviest Man, detailed his battles to lose weight and his housebound life.
He has said that he plans to launch the Manuel Uribe Foundation to educate Mexican people about nutrition, to combat obesity problems. He has asked Guinness World Records to certify in July 2008, his second title: "The world's greatest loser of weight." A vastly overweight Mexican man was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital after emergency workers were forced to demolish his bedroom... more -
Obesity boom will cost tax payers
Rising obesity levels are set to drain local health and public service budgets, which will mean higher taxes for all.
Obesity could cost NHS in England £6.3bn by 2015 if no effective action is taken says the Department of Health. Local councils in England and Wales are already shelling out tens of thousands of pounds on "fat-friendly" services, like widening crematoria furnaces.
The Local Government Association warns that Britain is fast becoming the "obesity capital of the world" and even more must be done to stop the nation's waistline continuing to expand. David Rogers, LGA spokesperson on public health, said: "It's a massive issue for public health but it also risks placing an unprecedented amount of pressure on council services. Obesity is increasingly costing the council taxpayer dear. It falls to social services to care for the house-bound obese adults, to invest money in encouraging people to be active and to replace school furniture that is just too small for larger pupils. Council equipment and infrastructure is having to be modified to deal with a population that is getting larger and larger." Rising obesity levels are set to drain local health and public service budgets, which will mean higher taxes for all. ... more -
McDonald's 4 Year Old Cheeseburger
Click on the link above. This is disgusting and a must see video. Fast food goes into our bodies and cant be broken down. HELLO OBESITY! Click on the link above. This is disgusting and a must see video. Fast food goes into our bodies and cant be broken down. HELLO OBESIT... more
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Healthy and Obese are not antonyms
The public-health crusade of the moment is a no-holds-barred war on obesity. Those waging it don’t have time for subtlety. When Senator Christopher Dodd introduced the Obesity Prevention Act of 2008 this summer, he called obesity “a medical emergency of hurricanelike proportions” that is wreaking havoc “on our families, on our society and on our health care system.”
But some activists and academics, part of a growing social movement known as fat acceptance, suggest that we rethink this war — as well as our definition of health itself. Fat-acceptance activists insist you can’t assume someone is unhealthy just because he’s fat, any more than you can assume someone is healthy just because he’s slim. (They deliberately use the word “fat” as a way to reclaim it, much the way some gay rights activists use the word “queer.”) Rather, they say, we should focus on health measurements that are more meaningful than numbers on a scale. This viewpoint received a boost in August when The Archives of Internal Medicine reported that fully half of overweight adults and one-third of the obese had normal blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides and blood sugar — indicating a normal risk for heart disease and diabetes, conditions supposedly caused by being fat.
This is a core argument of fat acceptance: that it’s possible to be healthy no matter how fat you are and that weight loss as a goal is futile, unnecessary and counterproductive — and that fatness is nobody’s business but your own.
Many fat-acceptance activists prefer a new approach to dieting that focuses on nutrition, exercise and body image. A new book out this fall, “Health at Every Size,” by Linda Bacon, a nutritionist and physiologist at the University of California at Davis, outlines this approach, which is less about dieting than a lifestyle change that emphasizes “intuitive eating”: listening to hunger signals, eating when you’re hungry, choosing nutritious food over junk. It encourages exercise, but for its emotional and physical benefits, not as a way to lose weight. It advocates tossing out the bathroom scale and loving your body no matter what it weighs.
The philosophy is migrating slowly into mainstream programs, like a spa in Vermont that focuses on “acceptance of ourselves and our wonderful sizes.” But the spas and other programs have trouble with the bottom line of fat acceptance — rejection of weight loss as a goal. Weight Watchers, for instance, uses some of the same slogans, and while it promotes its program as “not a diet,” it still tracks weight loss down to the decimal point. The public-health crusade of the moment is a no-holds-barred war on obesity. Those waging it don’t have time for subtlety. When Senato... more -
New twist in brain obesity riddle
The discovery of another way in which the body appears to control how much it eats could shed fresh light on obesity.
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Fattest man to get married
The world's fattest man, Manuel Uribe, has announced he will get married this month, after losing nearly half his original weight.
Uribe, 43, who holds the record for the world's fattest man in the 2007 Guinness Book of Records, is to marry a widow named Claudia, to whom he has been engaged for two years. "It will be a hefty wedding, on a large scale, but with a low-calorie banquet", he said.
The Mexican reached his record weight of 1,235 pounds - 88 stone - in 2007 after years of unhealthy living, including a diet of pizza and tacos. He has since dropped to 570lb (41 stone) from 1,300lb (93 stone) since February, by following the so-called "Zone Diet", a high-protein regime pioneered by Boston biochemist Dr Barry Sears.
Following the wedding announcement, Mr Uribe has been inundated with offers of sponsorship from international magazines, television stations. Local mayors who have offered to supply a cake for the 400 guests.
Mr Uribe thanked God for the "miracles he gave to a man who was on the edge of suicide and who today knows love." The world's fattest man, Manuel Uribe, has announced he will get married this month, after losing nearly half his original weight... more -
Tens of thousands of pupils to get free healthy school meals
Tens of thousands more children are to receive free healthy school meals under new plans by the Scottish Government.
From next August, those eligible will include the children of parents on the maximum working tax credit, resulting in an extra 44,000 pupils receiving free meals.
Adam Ingram, the children's minister, explained: "We are trying to target people who would benefit from free school meals but whom the entitlement doesn't actually stretch to at the moment," he said. "People are losing out who should be entitled." He went on: "We want to improve the health of children by improving eating habits. If we can change a child's palate in early years so they ask for good food, we can lose some of the bad habits which can have bad health effects later in life."
John Dickie, head of the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland, said: "It is a very welcome step toward ensuring every child, whatever their home circumstances, gets a healthy meal during the school day. It will help boost children's health, education and wellbeing and provide a really welcome benefit to hard-pressed families across Scotland." Tens of thousands more children are to receive free healthy school meals under new plans by the Scottish Government. ... more -
Too Good to Be True?: Fat That Keeps You Thin
Scientists have stumbled on a chemical in the body that could one day prevent or reverse diseases linked to obesity.
Researchers at Harvard University's School of Public Health (H.S.P.H.) report in Cell that palmitoleate, a newly discovered hormone produced by fat cells, is also a fatty acid. (Most hormones are proteins.) They believe that if they can increase its production, they may be able to stave off metabolic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease (caused by hardening of the arteries) and so-called fatty liver, an often asymptomatic disease that can lead to damage of the organ as well as cancer. They speculate that it may also aid in weight loss.
But how could fats help trim the portly—or at least avoid accompanying diseases?
"The homemade meal is always the healthiest and best tasting meal," says study co-author Gökhan Hotamisligil, a professor of genetics and metabolism at H.S.P.H. "Similarly, the best kind of fat is the kind that you produce on your own from your fat tissue."
He says researchers discovered palmitoleate's potential thinning power by engineering mice that did not have proteins responsible for shuttling dietary fat to storage fat cells (often found around the abdomen, thighs and other places familiar to cellulite hosts). The animals ate like pigs, so to speak, but remained lean, free of metabolic disease, and showed no sign of fat deposits on their livers or insulin resistance. (Resistance to insulin—a hormone produced in the pancreas—causes sugar to accumulate in the blood instead of being taken up the muscle, which can result in type 2 diabetes.)
Hotamisligil says the team traced the hormone to fat cells when they were trying to figure out why these mice had so many fat molecules in their blood. Normally, excess of fatty acids in the bloodstream end up in the muscle and liver—and eventually affect insulin-sensing cells, causing diabetes.
"Fat is a huge soup of many many chemical entities," Hotamisligil says. "You can't treat fat like one kind of thing. It's a combination of many different kinds of molecules—the composition of [the] soup is important."
Palmitoleate is involved in a process known as de novo lipogenesis, the production of fat molecules by fat cells. The naturally made fat, he explains, appears to have the opposite effect of fat from food: It actually keeps fat from accumulating on the liver and thwarts insulin resistance. He noted that whereas the healthy rats had lots of palmitoleate in their fat reserves, diabetic mice do not. The mechanism by which palmitoleate works, however, has yet to be figured out.
"If you can replenish that source [of palmitoleate] or find a way to activate fat cells to produce more of their own fat, this could end up helping people with obesity, diabetes and fatty liver disease," says Hotamisligil.
He warns that high palmitoleate levels may only guard against metabolic illness and not obesity itself. Although he cannot be certain that the hormone has the same effect on humans, he does note that the pathways involved in mice and humans are almost identical.
In an editorial accompanying the Cell article, endocrinologist Jerrold Olefsky of the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine points out: "Earlier studies have indicated that the capacity of human [fat cells] for de novo biosynthesis of fatty acids is considerably less than in rodent models." More work has to be done, he says, to determine if higher palmitoleate levels coincide with less metabolic disease in humans, as well. Scientists have stumbled on a chemical in the body that could one day prevent or reverse diseases linked to obesity. ... more -
Obesity 'raises miscarriage risk'
Women who have had a miscarriage could be at greater risk of miscarrying again if they are obese, research suggests.
A team from London's St Mary's Hospital followed the progress of 696 women whose miscarriages were classed as "unexplained" by a specialist clinic.
The team told a conference in Canada the risk of a further miscarriage was raised by 73% if the woman was obese.
However, an obesity specialist said it was potentially dangerous to try to lose weight when already pregnant.
Although the links between being obese and having problems conceiving and complications during pregnancy are well known, this study claims to be the first to look specifically at "recurrent" miscarriage, for which there is often no obvious cause.
Of the 696 women whose cases were followed, more than half were of "normal" weight, 30% were overweight, and 15% were obese, meaning they had a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or above.
The older the woman, the higher chance she had of having another miscarriage, but, when the figures were adjusted to account for this, obesity emerged as another possible factor.
While there was no difference in the miscarriage rates for overweight, normal and underweight women, the risk of further miscarriage increased sharply for obese women.
Foetal malformation
Winnie Lo, a clinical nurse specialist at St Mary's, who presented the research at the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology's international meeting in Montreal, said: "This is the first study to look directly at the link between BMI and recurrent miscarriage.
"It shows that obese women who experience recurrent miscarriage are at greater risk of subsequent pregnancy loss.
"All women with recurrent miscarriage should be weighed at their first consultation.
"Those who are found to be obese should be counselled regarding the benefits of weight loss."
Dr Nick Finer, an endocrinologist with an interest in obesity from Addenbrooke's Hospital near Cambridge, said that the findings were "unsurprising".
"We already know that the chances of fertility are less with increasing BMI, the risks of foetal malformation increase, alongside the risks of other adverse pregnancy outcomes."
He said that, while the reason why obesity might cause such problems was not clear, it was possible that it increased inflammation, harming the chances of a successful pregnancy.
However, he warned that crash diets during pregnancy would never be recommended as a means of increasing the chances of success.
"There are good reasons to try to lose weight before getting pregnant, but it is recommended that women do not try to do this once pregnancy is established, as it could cause problems." Women who have had a miscarriage could be at greater risk of miscarrying again if they are obese, research suggests. ... more -
Scientists Discover Baby Fat Cells In The Body
U.S. researchers reported on Thursday that baby fat cells formed at or before birth live inside the blood vessels that nourish fat deposits and lay waiting to form new fat cells.
The findings could help researchers trying to find better ways to control the obesity and diabetes epidemics, and perhaps help people grow new fat deposits after surgery.
The team at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas reported that eating excess calories may activate the cells, which leave their hiding places inside the walls of the blood vessels.
Dr. Jonathan Graff, who led the study published in the journal Science, said the immature cells, called progenitor cells, appear to be formed at or before birth.
"These cells become fat cells. Being able to manipulate them or alter them offers an important potential for obesity and diabetes," Graff said.
He believes it may be possible to remove immature cells from a patient's own fat and use them to grow natural grafts, for example, for a woman after breast cancer surgery. Cosmetic purposes might include plumping out lips or wrinkles.
Graff said it's easily accessible. "It's chock-a-block full of these stem cells. It's the ideal source for reconstruction and such cells may be useful for the field of regenerative medicine.”
Stem cell researchers hope someday to be able to remove a patient's own cells, manipulate them as needed and use them as tissue grafts or transplants to cure disease or repair injuries.
Graff's team genetically engineered mice so that cells that produced a large amount of a fat-regulating hormone called PPAR-gamma would glow green.
His team searched in fat deposits, inside the blood vessel walls, where some experts had guessed fat cells may originate. Some green-glowing cells were in there and when taken out they matured into fat cells.
"They're not just attached to the vessel wall, they're an integral part of it," Graff said.
Graff said the cells can react to compounds in the blood, including nutrients like glucose. Perhaps they drift out of the vessel walls when they sense enough glucose, which in turn signals that the body is taking in more calories than it needs and should store some as fat.
The team then tested the cells' response to diabetes drugs known as thiazolidinediones.
Also called TZDs or glitazones, the drugs include GlaxoSmithKline Plc's Avandia, which has been linked to increased heart attack risk, and Takeda Pharmaceutical Co Ltd's pioglitazone, sold as Actos or Glustin.
Graff noted that the progenitor cells matured into fat cells when treated with glitazone drugs.
"One of the side-effects that people don't like is they gain 10 or 15 pounds on (these drugs)," Graff said.
However, this could help explain how the drugs fight type-2 diabetes, which occurs when the body loses its ability to use insulin to convert food to fuel.
Graff said fat cells produce signals that control blood sugar. “We don't know what those signals are."
"We know that skinnier fat cells send out good signals and fatter fat cells send out bad signals. TZDs alter them so that they are more insulin-sensitive." U.S. researchers reported on Thursday that baby fat cells formed at or before birth live inside the blood vessels that nourish fat dep... more -
THE ACCEPTABLE SIN on Youtube - Obesity and Religion
We love this new little 5 minute short film! Why can't anyone see the direct link between Obesity and Religion?
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Free cook books teach 11-year-olds how to eat right
All 11-year-olds in England will be able to receive a free cookbook as part of a new initiative aimed at tackling obesity.
Ministers are also announcing that £151m will be spent building food technology areas in schools. The initiatives are designed to pave the way for compulsory cooking lessons for all 11- to 14-year olds by 2011.
Schools Secretary Ed Balls said everyone should be able to prepare basic, nutritious dishes from scratch instead of "taking pride" in not being able to cook properly. "Too many people just accept they cannot cook or simply do not have time for it," he said. "We've lost touch with making basic dishes from scratch, even though there has never been a wider range of food in our shops. Schools are only part of the solution - at the end of the day parents bring up children, not teachers. It will be great if young people had the chance to make healthy dishes from basic ingredients at home, not simply in the classroom – as I did when I was growing up."
The cookbook has a foreword by top chef Phil Vickery. He said: "Cooking is a skill and often it is not learned at an early enough age. Once you can cook the basics you will have the best survival tool in the box to take you into adult life. Eating good quality meals made from basic ingredients should be part of everyone's daily experience and by learning how to prepare simple and nutritious meals we will make this a reality." All 11-year-olds in England will be able to receive a free cookbook as part of a new initiative aimed at tackling obesity. ... more -
Obesity crisis: is surgery the solution?
Controversial surgery for treating obesity should be more widely available on the NHS, researchers claim. They say a lack of resources and prejudice from some doctors is preventing many morbidly obese patients from receiving a life-saving surgery that involves reducing the patient's stomach to the size of a thumb.
Dr Carel Le Roux at Imperial College London and his colleague Dr Rachel Batterham are calling for 10 times the number of operations currently performed. At present around 6,000 people receive the surgery each year but guidelines from the National Institute of Clinical Excellence say the number should be 60,000.
Currently only patients with a BMI of 35 or over are eligible, but the scientists say more research is needed to work out whether this criterion should be extended. A BMI of 25 or higher is considered overweight. Thirty or more is obese.
Around two-thirds of the UK population is overweight or obese. "What we need to know is which patients would benefit from this operation and I think that evidence is lacking," Le Roux told the British Association festival.
In the long term Le Roux and Batterham hope to recreate the changes brought about by surgery by using drugs, but in the meantime they say the £9,000 operation can make a huge difference to patients. "The holy grail of understanding how this works is that it will potentially lead to a cure for obesity and type two diabetes," said Batterham, who works at the centre for diabetes and endocrinology at University College London. Controversial surgery for treating obesity should be more widely available on the NHS, researchers claim. They say a lack of resources... more -
Pollution can make you fat
A new study shows that children exposed to pesticides in womb are twice as likely to be overweight.
Pollution can make children fat, startling new research shows. A groundbreaking Spanish study indicates that exposure to a range of common chemicals before birth sets up a baby to grow up stout, thus helping to drive the worldwide obesity epidemic.
The results of the study, just published -- the first to link chemical contamination in the womb with one of the developing world's greatest and fastest-growing health crises -- carry huge potential implications for public policy around the globe. They undermine recent strictures from the Conservative leader, David Cameron, that blame solely the obese for their own condition.
A quarter of all British adults and a fifth of children are obese -- four times as many as 30 years ago. And so are at least 300 million people worldwide. The main explanation is that they are consuming more calories than they burn. But there is growing evidence that diet and lack of exercise, though critical, cannot alone explain the rapid growth of the epidemic.
It has long been known that genetics give people different metabolisms, making some gain weight more easily than others. But the new study by scientists at Barcelona's Municipal Institute of Medical Research suggests that pollution may similarly predispose people to get fat.
The research, published in the current issue of the journal Acta Paediatrica, measured levels of hexachlorobenzene (HCB), a pesticide, in the umbilical cords of 403 children born on the Spanish island of Menorca, from before birth. It found that those with the highest levels were twice as likely to be obese when they reached the age of six and a half.
**CONTINUES** A new study shows that children exposed to pesticides in womb are twice as likely to be overweight. ... more -
Another Iraqi casualty of American occupation: their waistlines
It only took five years, but the obesity epidemic has reared it's head as an unexpected consequence of the Iraq war. Sectarian violence in Iraq has kept many people retreating into the safety of their homes, drastically altering their previously lifestyles. War doesn't make people fat, but the sedentary lifestyle that comes with staying indoors can. "To go out was to risk being kidnapped, killed by a bomb or caught up in the other violence plaguing Iraq. Curfews hindered people who tried to remain active." The result? a 2006 World Health Organization survey reported 26% of men and 38% of women ages 25 to 65 were obese, with a BMI of 30 or higher. It only took five years, but the obesity epidemic has reared it's head as an unexpected consequence of the Iraq war. Sectarian vi... more
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Pollution can make you fat, study claims
"Children exposed to pesticides in the womb are twice as likely to be overweight,A groundbreaking Spanish study indicates that exposure to a range of common chemicals before birth sets up a baby to grow up stout, thus helping to drive the worldwide obesity epidemic.
The results of the study, just published – the first to link chemical contamination in the womb with one of the developing world's greatest and fastest-growing health crises – carry huge potential implications for public policy around the globe." "Children exposed to pesticides in the womb are twice as likely to be overweight,A groundbreaking Spanish study indicates that ex... more -
Food for thought more than an empty saying
Intellectual work -- such as reading, writing or working on a computer -- prompts people to overeat and that might be a cause of obesity, a new university study suggests. Intellectual work -- such as reading, writing or working on a computer -- prompts people to overeat and that might be a cause of obesi... more
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People love the world's most dangerous burger.
I've always been fascinated with peoples infatuation with unreasonably unhealthy food. What's the worst food you've eaten? I've always been fascinated with peoples infatuation with unreasonably unhealthy food. What's the worst food you've eat... more
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Childhood obesity linked to stressed mothers
Millions of poor children in the United States may be getting fat before age 10 because their mothers are stressed out and the youngsters seek escape in unhealthy comfort food, researchers said on Tuesday.
The stress is rooted in poverty and can be brought on by money woes, work loads, insufficient health insurance and other factors, said Craig Gundersen of the University of Illinois, who led the study.
"People will eat in response to feeling stress," he said in a telephone interview, and in this case children may be eating more in response to stress-related trouble at home.
The findings show there is a need for a firm social safety net for poor families with protections such as food stamps; better financial education to help people better manage money; and adequate health insurance coverage, he said.
Gundersen and colleagues at Iowa State University and Michigan State University looked at data on 841 children in families living below the poverty line who were part of a government nutrition survey conducted from 1999 to 2002.
"We found that the cumulative stress experienced by the child's mother is an important determinant of child overweight," the research team reported in a study published in the September issue of Pediatrics.
Children in stressed homes where there was plentiful food were more likely to be overweight or obese than those living in stressed situations where food was scarce, they added, because while both were reacting to stress, the former group had food available in which to find refuge.
Follow the link for more about the study. Millions of poor children in the United States may be getting fat before age 10 because their mothers are stressed out and the youngst... more -
Youngsters with TVs in their rooms eat more, sleep less
Putting a TV in teenagers' rooms is bad for their health, according to University of Haifa research, which has confirmed foreign studies.
A study of 444 middle-school pupils by Prof. Yael Letzer, Dr. Tamar Shohat and Prof. Orna Chishinsky of the Jezreel Valley College found that teens with their own TVs slept less and ate more than those without.
The average bedtime of those studied was 23:04 p.m., and the average time slept was seven hours and 41 minutes. On weekends, the average bedtime was 1:45 a.m., with the average time slept increasing to nine hours and 45 minutes. Those with personal TVs went to sleep half an hour later but woke up at the same time.
Middle-school pupils watch an average of two hours and 40 minutes of TV and use their computer for three hours and 45 minutes weekly. On weekends, they watch half an hour more TV than during the rest of the week and use their computers for four hours.
Pupils with TVs in their bedrooms watch an hour more than those whose TV is in another room.
A fifth of pupils said they ate in front of the TV set on a regular basis, while 70 percent said they did this occasionally. Only 10% never ate in front of the TV. Computers were considered to be a less attractive eating place, with half never eating in front of the PC.
The more teenagers are exposed to the media, the more they eat in front of the TV or computer screen, the study indicated.
Previous studies have shown that eating in front of the TV increases calorie intake and the risk of obesity in children and adults. Putting a TV in teenagers' rooms is bad for their health, according to University of Haifa research, which has confirmed foreign ... more
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