Eating Habits

Kids! It's not bad enough that they leave their clothes on the floor, cost you a fortune and drive you crazy with worry. They also may be making you fat. So says a study appearing in the Jan. 4 online edition of the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine. Compared with adults living without children in the home, adults living with kids younger than 17, on average, take in an additional 4.9 grams of fat daily. And 1.7 grams of that additional fat is saturated fat - the artery-clogging kind of fat that abounds in many meat and dairy products, processed foods and meals taken out from fast-food joints and eaten in restaurants.

Florence Gill, 93 and suffering from dementia, needed a little help each day dressing, bathing and eating. She was, by all accounts, doing well -- until she entered a nursing home to recover from an eye infection. In just four weeks, the 5-foot-1 former schoolteacher dwindled from 88 pounds to 72 pounds. Her son Gerald visited twice a week but didn't notice the weight loss because his mother was always covered by a blanket. Nurses assured him that she was eating. By the time his mother was free of the infection, it was too late.

PEDALING TO THE post office today, biking it, substituting leg power for half a gallon of air- and bay-polluting, highway-supporting, foreign-depending petroleum -- just to send off a half-ounce, overdue bill. It's one of those days when I just feel the need to try, if only a bit, to shrink the giant balloon that always floats over my head. You haven't noticed the balloon? It's the size of a sperm whale. Stop snickering. You've got Moby Dick in tow, too, if you're anything like a typical American.

Harry Balzer has staked his career on something he himself doesn't take very seriously. He's not a foodie. "I just eat to live," he said, unreeling his 6-foot-4-inch frame into a kitchen chair in his home in North Barrington, Ill. "It's never been about the food for me. It's about the information." Now, information: That, Balzer takes very seriously. He is a vice president at NPD, a company that provides statistical information on how people behave. In Balzer's case, those statistics, delivered to clients worldwide, reflect how - and what and why - Americans eat. "There are 300 million of us in this country now," Balzer said.

Carol Carr showed all the signs of colorectal cancer seven years ago, but doctors thought the 44-year-old Glen Burnie woman was too young to have the disease and never tested her for it. Instead, they said her diarrhea, vomiting, cramping, iron deficiency and extreme fatigue were more likely caused by the flu, anxiety and even a brain disorder. Treatments for those illnesses failed and Carr got so sick she had to stop working. When she finally saw a specialist who ordered a colonoscopy she was suffering from Stage II colorectal cancer.

In a no-nonsense approach to weight loss, the American Heart Association's new diet book offers options for the weak. Can't give up pizza? Try eating two slices instead of your regular three. Craving ice cream? Try a sorbet. "The intent on doing this was to try to get around the faddish diets," said Dr. Robert Eckel, president-elect of the American Heart Association and professor of medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. "The theme is based on behavior, nutrition and physical activity."

Critic's Pick -- Dr. Sanjay Gupta explores the dangerous eating habits of Americans in a new edition of CNN: Special Investigations Unit (8 p.m., CNN).

Former New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni has gout. In this Wednesday blog post , Bruni discusses how his diagnosis has changed his eating habits. Bruni admits that "there are times, crazily, when I'm almost happy about the gout ... it provided a dietary shove where the gentle pushes of a vague desire for self-improvement hadn't sufficed. " He talks about the change in his eating habits, which for the most part has been easier than he thought. Still, Bruni wonders, "Why must it take something like that for so many of us to pivot in a healthier direction?"

Before Aiesha Eddins got pregnant, she didn't give much thought to her diet. "I ate whatever," said the 27-year-old Owings Mills woman. "We ordered take-out. " But when she weighed in at 220 pounds during her initial prenatal visit, she quickly earned a spot at the Johns Hopkins Hospital's Nutrition in Pregnancy Clinic, launched in December to counsel and treat obese women. The clinic has around a dozen patients but already is expanding. An estimated one in five pregnant women are obese, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an epidemic according to some doctors who have begun to buck conventional ideas about "eating for two. " They now recommend healthy diets, little or no weight gain and even bariatric surgery for obese women before they get pregnant.

"Sam was begging him to eat green eggs and ham. He said, `No!' But the man said, `Yes.' `Green Eggs and Ham' by Dr. Seuss, read this book please."Stephanie SimonsRunnymede Elementary School"The book I enjoyed reading the most was `Whales' by John Wexo. Anyone who is interested in learning more about the giants of the ocean will find this book to their liking. It describes the different types of whales, their physical features, eating habits and much more. The pictures are also very good."Derrell CollinsChoptank Elementary