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This NPR story shares recently released study supporting what we know in our bones: humans thrive with connection to nature. Read more here: Replacing vacant lots with green spaces eases depression . This study is hot off the press: " Effect of Greening Vacant Land on Mental Health of Community-Dwelling Adults: A cluster randomized trial. " "The impact was strongest for residents of poorer neighborhoods — they showed at least a 27.5 percent reduction in the prevalence of depression." "The...

A toddler's self-regulation—the ability to change behavior in different social situations—may predict whether he or she will be obese come kindergarten, but the connection appears to be much different for girls than for boys. Self-regulation is something all children must develop, and poorer self-control in childhood is associated with worse adult health, economic and social outcomes. However, a new study from The Ohio State University found that more self-regulation may not necessarily...

Most people who struggle with weight and food have probably suspected that trauma in the past plays a role. In this new video, Anna Runkle (the Crappy Childhood Fairy) interviews Mary Giuliani, who explains what we now know about childhood adversity, food and obesity. She shares how she lost 160 pounds (and has kept it off for 15 years), and teaches ways to calm emotions (and the brain) and face the triggers that drive overeating in the first place (READ MORE AND WATCH THE VIDEO HERE).

“We feel that apolitical and ‘color-blind’ approaches to addressing food inequity fly in the face of the statistics, which clearly show that Black people are disproportionately impacted in a negative way by food apartheid, environmental racism, and discrimination in planning and public policy,” says Brown. “To ignore these realities in [so-called] food justice work is a gross miscalculation at best.” ...

Summer is upon us, which means an increase in street crime and ice cream consumption. However, neither one causes the other; they are both highly correlatedwith summer’s heat, which brings more people out of their homes and onto the streets, where some eat ice cream and some get mugged. Correlation is not causality. Here are two more facts to ponder: American children take lots of standardized, machine-scored, multiple-choice tests, and they are getting fatter. Is this just another...

Dr. Roy Wade, from the Cobbs Creek Clinic in West Philadelphia, works on his own screening tool to measure young patients "adversity score" -- indicators of abuse, neglect, signs of poverty, racial discrimination, or bullying. "Wade wants to take action because research suggests that the stress of a tough childhood can raise the risk for later disease, mental illness and addiction." https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/03/09/377569414/to-head-off-traumas-legacy-start-young

"One reason the underprivileged face an obesity crisis is that they rely on ineffective weight-loss strategies. In part, this is because economic uncertainty makes it harder to plan for workouts and healthy meals. -- Often, low-income people aren't sure what tomorrow will bring. So why waste time trying to diet?" https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/08/rich-people-exercise-poor-people-take-diet-pills/378852/?utm_source=SFFB

"Victims of childhood sexual abuse are far more likely to become obese adults. New research shows that early trauma is so damaging that it can disrupt a person’s entire psychology and metabolism -- Women [have] said they felt more physically imposing when they were bigger. They felt their size helped ward off sexual advances from men." https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/12/sexual-abuse-victims-obesity/420186/

"A diet high in saturated fats and sugars, the so-called 'Western Diet', actually affects the parts of the brain that are important to memory and make people more likely to crave the unhealthful food -- Research from the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience found that obese people have less white matter in their brains than their lean peers — as if their brains were 10 years older." ...

"Neuroscientists have found that food and recreational drugs have a common target in the 'reward circuit' of the brain, and that the brains of humans and other animals who are stressed undergo biological changes that can make them more susceptible to addiction. -- [People] will literally have a different brain depending on [their] zip code, social circumstance, and stress level." https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/opinion/sunday/what-cookies-and-meth-have-in-common.html

Kiarra’s struggles with her weight are imbued with this sense, that getting thin is a mystery she might never solve, that diet secrets are literally secret. On a Sunday, she might diligently make a meal plan for the week, only to find herself reaching for Popeyes fried chicken by Wednesday. She blames herself for her poor health—as do many of the people I met in her community, where obesity, diabetes, and heart disease are ubiquitous. They said they’d made bad choices. They used food, and...

https://longreads.com/2018/06/12/the-difference-between-being-broke-and-being-poor/