Hot MedFax

Quick.  What's the one word tweeted most?  No, it's not sex.  Or Hillary.  Or Trump.  It's a food.  And it's "coffee", followed by "pizza," then "beer." Besides hinting at which foods are popular, tweets may reveal something about our health, according to newswise.com. Communities that expressed positive sentiments about healthy foods were more likely to be healthier overall. Scientists at the University of Utah surveyed nearly 80 million Twitter messages - a random sample of one percent of publicly available, geo-tagged tweets - over the course of one year. They then sorted through the 4 million tweets about food for ones that fell on opposite ends of the health spectrum: tweets mentioning fast food restaurants, or lean meats, fruits, veggies or nuts. Out of that top 10 list, only the fourth most popular food-related item, "Starbucks", fit into the fast food category. The seventh, "chicken", was the onl...

There's another reason not to switch out the chips and Oreos for bananas and broccoli.  According to a new study , eating healthy costs more about $550 a year. Cary Polis reports at The Huffington Post that healthy foods cost $1.50 a day more the other stuff.  Doesn't sound like much, but when you add it up over a year -- well, you can see why people who don't have much money aren't exactly racing to Whole Foods. "Even categories such as snacks/sweets and grains also cost more for healthier options, at $0.12 and $0.03 respectively," she reports. No significant price differences were seen between healthier and less healthy soda and juices.  The biggest price differences were in meat and protein, with prices an average of 29 cents higher per serving than the unhealthier choice. But don't be quick to run to McDonald's, either. "The study authors caution that the $1.50 per day conclusion is based on comparing a very healthy diet -- such as one r...

Can it really be?  Is McDonald's really going to offer healthy food , not just salads that, when you add the dressing and croutons, have more fat and calories than Big Macs? Looks like it might be true.  Both The New York Times and Daily Mail ran stories this week about the fast food giant's new menu that will in, three years, in some places, allow diners to swap french fries for salad, fruit or vegetables (real vegetables), something they've been doing in France (it figures) for some time, and other healthy choices. The new menus are being rolled out in 20 of the company's markets, both here and abroad, that are responsible for 85% of their sales.   The changes will take place in half  of McDonald's restaurants in three years, and the rest will roll out sometime. .  .later.  Oh, 2020. The reason they're doing this?  There're a lot, but one of the main ones is you millennials, who prefer Chipotle and Panera (me, too). What's in store?  ...

So they've pooped out already.  The AP reports today that many school districts that opted to replace pizza and chicken fingers with spinach salads and fresh fruit are now going right back to fattening, greasy food because the kids just weren't interested. Apparently, they lost a lot of money and threw away a lot of food.  And had a lot of kids who didn't eat and were too hungry to concentrate as the day wore on. Writes Carolyn Thompson, "Districts that rejected the program say the reimbursement was not enough to offset losses from students who began avoiding the lunch line and bringing food from home or, in some cases, going hungry." Many schools are cutting ties with the $11 billion National School Lunch Program, which reimburses schools for meals served and gives them access to lower-priced food, she reports. "Some of the stuff we had to offer, they wouldn't eat," Thompson quotes Catlin, Ill., Superintendent Gary Lewis, whose district saw ...