Your Health This (Tasty) Week

A family who eats together…has smarter kids. A survey of 1063 teenagers and 550 parents in the US found that families who eat dinner together at least five times per week have kids that do better in school (64% As/Bs vs 49% As/Bs for the non-together-eaters) and generally avoid drugs, alcohol and smoking. How nice. My only question..does it count if you are eating Pizza Hut?

Eating too much fatty fish, such as salmon and herring, might increase the risk of having a low birth weight baby. Which is bad. In a study of nearly 45,000 Danish women, researchers found that women who ate more then two servings of v. fatty fish per week had a 24% increased risk of delivering a weeny tot (or as my mother used to call them, “Safeway chickens”). The authors chalk up the results to nasty pollutants, such as PCBs, that accumulate in fatty fish tissue. But take note: an earlier study of IQ found that moms who got their fatty fish during pregnancy had smarter 8-year-olds; this despite higher levels of neurotoxic mercury etc.

Though I could hardly call the herbal, low-cal sweetner stevia, tasty, it certainly has few tongues a’wagging. Mostly those at the FDA, who consider the stuff unsafe.

Bagged salad might SEEM like a fresh n’ delicious idea, but when you consider that it is a ten times the price of an actual head of leafy veg, goes slimy and gross just milliseconds after you open it, and gets all contaminated with E. coli (again), it’s just not that appealing.

And finally, when you’ve decided exactly which foods to eat and/or avoid, especially out in public, ponder upon this: only 77% of Americans bother to wash their hands in public toilets. Better take that head of lettuce home and wash thoroughly before use. Yum.