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I hate to say it. You couldn't prove it by me. But the CDC says childhood obesity is dropping and they have the study to prove it. But in 18 states, there were at least slight drops in obesity for low-income preschoolers, health officials said Tuesday, according to the Associated Press. But the news may not be quite as good as it sounds.  Basically, what the CDC found that obesity rates are staying flat, just not increasing.  "However, a few places — Philadelphia, New York City and Mississippi — reported improvements in the last couple of years. But the report from the Centers for Disease and Control Prevention shows signs of wider-ranging progress," the AP reports. "Now, for the first time, we're seeing a significant decrease in childhood obesity" nationally, Dr. Thomas Frieden, CDC director, told the AP. But rates are still too high, he added. One in 8 preschoolers is obese in the United States, and it's even more common in black and Hispanic k...

We knew it all along.  Ads do lead people to do things and now a new study has proved that cigarette ads do, indeed, lead teens to smoke. Movies feature fewer people smoking these days than in the past, and while you still don't see an actor walk into a party or restaurant and the first thing they do is light up a cigarette, but the cigarettes are still there, and they're still considered cool. My own mom began smoking when she was 11 (and this was back in the 1930s) because her best friend did, and while my mom was able to quit in her 70s, her friend went on smoking -- and hacking, even through emphysema -- until she died in her mid-80's. I was lucky.  The smell of smoke always filled our house and I couldn't stand it, or the sight of all those ashtrays (though my mom was a clean smoker, and emptied them almost as quickly as they were filled).  As a result, I've chosen never to smoke and am probably the only living person the planet who has never held a ci...