Getting a Grip on Childhood Obesity

Childhood has been a problem for many years, and if we don’t begin to put a stop to it, we are destined to be a nation of fat adults—more so than we already are. Most adults who suffer from obesity suffered from childhood obesity because they were not taught or encouraged to eat healthy foods. In some ethnic groups or nationalities food is a favorite part of entertaining, and it is considered an insult if you don’t partake of all of the foods that are served. Though that may not be bad for the occasional visit, during the holidays when you are visiting a great deal, it can be a problem.

The first step toward finding a solution for childhood obesity is to educate the parents about the dangers of both overeating and eating the wrong foods, and the education must begin during the child’s infancy. Help them get rid of the idea that a fat baby is a healthy baby and teach them to stop putting food or a bottle in the baby’s mouth when he or she cries. Babies do not cry only when they are hungry or need a diaper change—sometimes they just want attention. The problem is parents today are too busy with their own lives to take the time to devote to the needs of their children. If we are to put an end to childhood obesity, we must begin with the way parents feed their children beginning in infancy.

Educating the parents is only one of the solutions. Once children begin school, the parents are not always there to make sure they eat healthy foods. One of the problems lies in the schools where they tend to provide vending machines with unhealthy snacks and soft drinks. Vending machines that children use should never include soft drinks but rather natural fruit juices and water. School Healthy Vending has the right idea—filling vending machines in schools with healthy and organic snacks. YoNaturals supports this effort and encourages more schools to become involved with this vendor and Healthy Student Vending that both provide snacks that are healthy rather than full of empty calories that contribute to the problem of childhood obesity.

Fighting childhood obesity is not an effort that parents or the school alone can battle—it must be a concentrated effort by both. Providing healthy snacks at home or school is not going to solve the problem; it will take a concentrated effort from both sources to eliminate the problem of childhood obesity thus reducing the chances of an increase in the number of cases of adult obesity.

Organic Vending: Effect of Friends on Weight

At YoNaturals organic vending, we feel that the cause of obesity is attributable to more than simply eating too many supersized fries or drinking a milkshake with every meal, and even goes beyond genetics. In fact, just last year a study determined that there is a link between obesity and friendships. That is, people who have an obese friend are 57 percent more likely to be overweight or obese themselves.

Interestingly enough, the correlation was most pronounced between close friends, but it was also evident between looser social circles. This pattern would suggest that obesity can be viewed as a social contagion. And the researchers think that the reason obesity spreads in such a way is because humans have a tendency to unconsciously mimic the habits and idiosyncrasies of the people that they hold in high regard.

Now, the shocking part is that statisticians already estimate the number of overweight American adults to be over 60 percent, with about 30 percent of the people in this category meeting the threshold for being considered obese. And those numbers are increasing every day.

Although research suggests that there is an underlying predisposition for obesity that is found in some people’s genes, studies like these indicate that social interactions and environments play a significant role in obesity as well. Genetics alone simply cannot account for the huge increase in the percentage of obese Americans over the past few decades.

This study that was performed last year asked participants to make a list of the closest people in their social networks, including spouses, family members, and friends that they were likely to keep in touch with over time. The researchers then used this list to incorporate even more participants into the study for purposes of studying the obesity epidemic that seems to be prevalent in society.

During the course of their study, the researchers observed that friend groups did not form due to people of similar weight becoming friends; rather it seemed that people gained weight in groups. In fact, when two people listed one another as a friend and one of those two gained weight, the second person was 171 percent more likely to become obese themselves. Furthermore, this mutual weight gain was not observed in pairs of people where only one person listed the other as their friend. In these cases, when weight gain occurred, it spread only to the participant who listed the other person as their friend.

Other findings in the study indicated that people who had friends with obese friends (friends of friends, that is to say) had a 20 percent increase in their risk of becoming obese. Siblings and spouses also had an effect on a participant’s likelihood of becoming obese, although at 40 percent and 37 percent (respectively) it was significantly smaller than the effect of having obese friends.

It is undeniable that the American propensity to eat supersized fries and milkshakes in mass quantities have a lot to do with the obesity epidemic in this country, but it is also quickly becoming obvious that there are other underlying social reasons that will explain why obesity is becoming a huge problem for many adults in this nation. Let’s use peer pressure to our advantage instead of the other way around; try pressuring your friends to patronize a natural and organic vending machines by YoNaturals, instead of French Fries.

Organic and Natural Vending Happy Hour Tips

What is it about socializing that makes it seemingly impossible to eat healthfully? When one is alone, choosing vegetables over fried foods seems like the easiest thing in the world as you eat your meals and pay attention to how full your body is getting and how you are feeling, stopping when you’re full and feeling completely satisfied all the while. Yet somehow, when your friends, family, or co-workers enter the picture, the food choices you make slip to the wayside.

We’ve all been there, to be sure, but that doesn’t mean that we ought to resign ourselves to forever slipping up and eating poorly when we’re socializing, thereby sabotaging our best “eat-healthy” intentions. The key, of course, is to force yourself to pay as much attention to what you put into your mouth when you’re out with friends and loved ones as you do when you are at home solo, chowing down on healthy salads, and feeling good about it. Easier said than done, of course.

Even if you have strong intentions of eating healthfully when you join your friends for a happy hour, odds are good that you are not going to find too much on that happy hour menu that isn’t fried, greasy, or sweet, that’s just not the point behind bars, or any eatery that would offer a happy hour special. One of the best things you can do for yourself in such a situation – when you know you will be going out to join your friends for drinks at a place that will probably not offer a salad with your drink – is to eat up before you leave the house. Eat a salad or some turkey wrapped in lettuce before you meet up with everyone, and you will be much more satiated and much less prone to falling prey to fried cheese or chicken wings.

Of course another risk is the drinks themselves – calories pile up when they are being drank and not chewed. Humans seem to be rather unable to concentrate on how many drinks they’ve had – not surprisingly since this is the science behind the happy hour, after all. Still, keeping yourself to just one or two drinks will be a great thing not only for your bar tab, but also for your figure. There are a lot of sugars in alcohol and especially in the mixed drinks that women so often order so avoiding having too many of these sorts of drinks is the best thing you can do for yourself. Order a drink and sip on it, see how long you can nurse it. You’ll be well on your way to maintaining the healthy eating you’ve worked so hard at throughout the rest of the week while consuming organic and natural foods from YoNaturals vending machines!.

Jessica Vachal created this article on behalf of Yo Naturals vending in order to support those who try to eat natural and organic as much as possible, even when drinking!

The Benefits of Water by YoNaturals in California

This article was written by Louanne Cox for YoNaturals in San Diego, California.

Water is the most important component of your body.   Your muscles are 70% water, your blood is 82% water even your bones are 25% water.   Despite knowing this when we are thirsty Americans are reaching for sugar-laden soft drinks instead of simple, clean natural water.

Water is second only to oxygen for sustaining human life; did you know that you can survive for 30 days without food, but only 3 days without drinking water?   It is quite a sobering thought.   Although the experts cannot all agree on how much water we need one thing that they all agree on is that water is important.

If you want to stay healthy and boost your immune system then drinking water is important.   Water helps to regulate our body temperature and also helps flush the kidneys out.   The kidneys have the important job of flushing out waste products through urine.

Water also helps to aid our digestion so that we can absorb nutrients from our food in order to stay healthy.   Water helps with the process of carrying nutrients and oxygen to the cells in our body.

If you want to look good then water is very important.   Drinking water will help regulate our weight as well as helping our skin to stay clear.   It is essential to drink water to keep our eyes and mouths moist as well.   They say the eyes are the windows to your soul, the last thing you want people to see are red, dry eyes when they look at you.

Water also helps to cushion joints helping to keep them flexible.   Water also helps to protect tissues and organs from shock.

If you are an athlete then drinking water is really important as dehydration can lead to a decline in performance.   According to the Colgan Institute dehydrating an athlete by only 3% then their performance can drop by 10%.   This could be the difference between winning and losing.

If you are more of an academic than an athlete it is also important to drink water as it aids concentration.   If concentration is improved then studying and retaining information is also helped. That’s why YoNaturals  always offers  the best water and fruit juices in their healthy vending machines.

One thing to remember is if you are feeling thirsty then you are already dehydrated.   Drink little and often throughout the day.   If you eat plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables then you are able to get water through them so your needs will be less than if you eat a lot of highly processed foods.

The Organic Food Industry

The following article was written by Louanne Cox for YoNaturals Vending.

We are constantly told that organic is good, but what does organic mean?   In basic terms it means that food is grown without the use of any chemical fertilizers or pesticides.   Animals are reared without being fed antibiotics and eat only organic food themselves.

There are strict regulations to be met before a company can call their product organic and these regulations are overseen by the USDA’s National Organic Program.   There are actually four different labeling standards that are applied and these are:

•    100% Organic

•    Organic

•    Made with organic materials

•    Less than 70% organic

100% organic is exactly what it says, if the label says organic it means that contains at least 95% organic ingredients.   If the label says made with organic materials then they must have at least 70% content.   If the food contains less than 70% organic then it cannot say it is organic, however it can list organic ingredients.

There are a number of reasons why people talk about turning to organic food.   The first one that we hear is the health benefits.   Although there have not been any conclusive studies to show that organic food is better for your health, how could it not be?   Not ingesting chemicals versus ingesting chemicals.   Considering that 60% of all weed killers and 30% of all insecticides are potential causes of cancer the argument for organic food is pretty good.

People want to become more environmentally responsible and buying organic can help with that.   When farming organically the soil does not get depleted by chemicals, this allows it to retain a lot of the trace minerals that are often missing in our diets (another tick in the health box).   There is also no pollution from the production and use of the chemicals traditionally used in agriculture.

Going organic can also help the fight against global warming.   According to research conducted by Rodale Institute soil that is farmed in a sustainable manner is able to absorb 30% more carbon emissions than conventionally farmed soil.   They claim that if we, as a nation, were to switch our farmland to organic we could cut the US’s greenhouse emissions by 10%.

With all of these reasons to go organic it is hardly surprising that the organic food industry is one of the fasting growing branches of the grocery industry.   The organic food industry is a niche, but it is a rapidly growing niche.   In the 2002 Organic Consumer Trends Report it stated that 39% of the US population uses organic products.

The big multi-nationals such as Unilever, Kraft and Nestle have all moved to take ownership of a number of organic food companies.   They are forecasting that the market will get bigger and produce higher profits.

Organic food was once only available at farmer markets and in health food stores, but now there are organic foods in every supermarket in the US.

We at YoNaturals vending know that organic food industry is big business and it is only going to get bigger.