For You Visual Learners
The FDA is ramping up anti-smoking initiatives, including a plan to add graphic warnings to smoking packages. The agency just released potential ads, including the one you see on the right. You can view all nine proposals here. Check them out.

The process before final implementation is still a lengthy one: a period of public comment before they decide on the few that will actually be used, then the Tobacco Control Act authorizing this regulation (passed, it should be noted, by a Democratic Congress and signed by President Obama) allows 15 months before such a rule could take effect. So, it will not be until late 2012 that we actually see these on the shelves.

I'm not crazy about all of the pictures they chose, but in general, this campaign is an excellent plan, making all the more real the dangers of smoking, and upgrading the warning from what is otherwise ignorable as small print. Smoking is a menace - not just to the public health system, but to the poor unfortunate souls - including children - that breathe it in without having the slightest interest in taking a puff. If we can keep someone from taking up the nasty addiction, or help give an extra incentive to someone trying to stop, all the better.

Great Moments in Dieting
Nutrition professor Mark Haub lost 27 pounds in 10 weeks to bring himself down to a healthy weight. His diet of choice? Twinkies and other delicious hostess cakes.

For 10 weeks, Mark Haub... ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, instead of meals. To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Haub munched on Doritos chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, too.

His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most -- not the nutritional value of the food.

This is not such a radical finding. I mean, yeah if you nearly starve yourself except for a daily protein shake and a few sugary snacks, you will probably lose weight. The surprising part is that his cholestorol, triglycerides and other overall health indicators improved also. Go figure.

Nature's Candy
The weekend news that caught my eye - and hits a little close to home: while the government wants to push a healthy lifestyle, they are also desperately pushing....cheese. A Department of Agriculture program called Dairy Management has been partnering with companies like Domino's Pizza to aggressively market cheese products.

Dairy Management, whose annual budget approaches $140 million, is largely financed by a government-mandated fee on the dairy industry. But it also receives several million dollars a year from the Agriculture Department, which appoints some of its board members, approves its marketing campaigns and major contracts and periodically reports to Congress on its work.

The organization’s activities, revealed through interviews and records, provide a stark example of inherent conflicts in the Agriculture Department’s historical roles as both marketer of agriculture products and America’s nutrition police.

Cheese is a major contributor to America's saturated fat intake. In fact, a group of physicians disputing the government's remarkable (and unsupported) claim a few years ago that an increase in cheese consumption could help with weight loss said that the delicious treat is likely the biggest culprit in the obesity epidemic.

This is all tough for me to take. I love cheese. And eat way way too much of it. I understand the government's role in promoting American-made food products, but it's hard enough resisting the allure of nature's candy without millions of tax dollars going to help urge me to eat The Wisconsin.

On Oct. 13, Domino’s announced the latest in its Legends line of cheesier pizza, which Dairy Management is promoting with the $12 million marketing effort. Called the Wisconsin, the new pie has six cheeses on top and two more in the crust. “This is one way that we can support dairy farms across the country: by selling a pizza featuring an abundance of their products,” a Domino’s spokesman said in a news release. “We think that’s a good thing.”

A laboratory test of the Wisconsin that was commissioned by The Times found that one-quarter of a medium thin-crust pie had 12 grams of saturated fat, more than three-quarters of the recommended daily maximum. It also has 430 calories, double the calories in pizza formulations that the chain bills as its “lighter options.”

As the NYTimes graphic indicates, America's per capita cheese consumption has nearly tripled in the last 40 years. Budget-wise, this is by no means egregious. A few million Agriculture dollars is a drop in the bucket of federal spending, obviously. But the message programs like this send is a troubling one. We should be engaged in marketing tasty, healthy foods grown domestically. That would provide all the economic help the food industry needs without sacrificing the public health in the process.

The fat in cheese? It sells itself. As my daily intake attests.

We Need to Get Off Our Butts
A new study confirms, Americans take fewer steps:

The study tracked the steps of 1,136 adults around the United States who wore pedometers for two days in 2003. The results were compared to similar pedometer studies in Switzerland, Australia and Japan. The data collected showed that Americans, on average, took 5,117 steps a day, far short of the averages in western Australia (9,695 steps), Switzerland (9,650 steps) and Japan (7,168 steps)....

The fitness gap detected by the pedometer studies is equal to about 30 to 40 minutes of walking each day. One mile of walking covers about 2,000 steps, researchers say. The health community typically urges people to take at least 10,000 steps a day to maintain good health, which is equal to about five miles of walking.