Seventy-one high school football players from seven schools were poked and probed in a variety of ways to determine their fitness levels. Based on their their body fat percent (or BF% in industry shorthand), 45 were declared of normal weight. But based on their BMI, only 26 fell into the normal category. Likewise, 18 were considered overweight based on their BF% and 21 using BMI as a measure, while six were considered obese under BF% guidelines, 24 when judged by their BMI. Said the ACSM: “These larger players’ muscular body composition may lead to overstated body mass indexes.”

Read more here and here.

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To eat or not to eat: I wouldn’t think about heading out for an early morning bike ride without first eating a half a bagel with peanut butter and honey. Then again, says a study from the University of Birmingham, that may explain why I can’t shed that spare tire around my midsection. The study, published in the ACSM’s journal, Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, found that athletes burn more existing fat when they don’t eat before a workout. This finding was based on seven cyclists who ate before a ride and seven who did not. Sounds simplistic, but the eating exercisers burned their new fuel first, the non eaters’ bodies went immediately in search of existing body fat to fuel their ride. Of course, if it’s performance you want, be advised that the non-eaters did not perform as well, either.

Read more here.

* * *

Tarheels getting fatter: According to the just-released “F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future 2010” report from the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, North Carolinians are continuing to grow. Nearly 30 percent (29.4 percent) of North Carolina adults are obese, ranking the state the 10th chubbiest in the country, up from the No. 12 spot it held last year. A breakdown by race shows 41.1 percent of black adults are obese, as are 27 percent of whites and 25.7 percent of Latinos. The news wasn’t much better for our kids, 18.6 percent of whom are obese, ranking North Carolina 11th nationally.

Read more here.

That’s the thinking behind the Small Steps Web site  run by the government (the White House and the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services).

Small Steps is a small but effective, non-overwhelming Web site that appreciates that people have various challenges to living a healthy life, not the least of which is making a second career out of trying to live a healthy life. It offers quick tips and suggestions for being more physically active and eating better. The site is divided into two components:

Small Step Kids Goal: eat healthy but fun, move for at least 60 minutes a day. To that end, it offers fun, healthy, quick recipies — a strawberry yogurt shake that requires unsweetened pineapple juice, low-fat yogurt, unsweetened frozen strawberries, a touch of granulated sugar and a power tool, a blender! — and fun ways to move, such as “Daffy Duck” (which is actually freeze tag gussied up with a Loony Tunes character). There’s also a section for teachers to make the classroom healthier.

Small Step Adults and Teens This is where the time constraints of modern living are taken into consideration. There’s a tip of the day (Today’s: Use vegetable oils over solid fats), which suggest small steps that go a long way toward fixing bad habits and suggestions for small ways you can be more active, such as:

• Take the dog for a walk rather than just letting her out in the backyard.
• Take the stairs, not the elevator.
• Play with the kids, rather than sitting on a bench and watching them.

Small Steps: A simple Web site with simple suggestions that can make a difference.

Apps for Healthy Kids is awarding $60,000 in prizes to individuals who can “create innovative, fun and engaging software tools and games that encourage children directly or through their parents to make more nutritious food choices and be more physically active.”  The program is especially interested in reaching kids ages 9-12.

(I probably don’t need to point this out, but there’s a rather large problem with obesity in this country: obesity-related maladies cost us about $150 billion a year in health care expenses; the number of obese Americans has tripled over the past 30 years; the expected lifespan of America’s children is now less than that for their parents. The Let’s Move! program is trying to do something about it.)

Key things interested programmers should know:

• “Tools and games should be built using the USDA nutrition dataset recently made available to the public through the Open Government Initiative,” advise contest officials. (That dataset covers information on total calories, calories from “extras” (solid fats and added sugars), MyPyramid food groups for over 1,000 commonly eaten foods). You can find more official rules here.
• Registration is free and may be done here.
• Apps must be submitted by 5 p.m. EDT, June 30.
• Judging by a panel of experts (ranging from Dora Rivas, president of the School Nutrition Association) to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak) begins July 14 and ends August 14. The public will also be able to vote on submissions during this time.
• Grand prize winner gets $10,000, runner up $4,500, the people’s choice award winner $4,500 as well.
• Participants must be at least 13 (which we know eliminates a lot of qualified programmers, but dems da rules).

For more detailed information about the Apps for Healthy Kids program, go here.

Here’s hoping one of you comes up with an app that does for childhood obesity what Paper Toss has done for passing the time on tedious conference calls.

Photo: Check out some of the apps already submitted, including Pick Chow (pictured) by going here.

Green exercise? Really pressed for time? Is carving out 60 minutes a day to work out, as recommended by the National Institutes of Health,  beyond the pale of your schedule? Even 30 minutes broken into bite-size 10-minute segments isn’t doable? According to a study in the current issue of the American Chemical Society’s “Environmental Science & Technology” journal, just five minutes of “green” exercise a day can improve your health — your mental health, at least. Study authors Jules Pretty and Jo Barton say 10 studies involving 1,252 people in the United Kingdom found that just five minutes of gardening, hiking or other pursuits in a green setting decreases your risk of mental illness and improves your sense of well-being. Read more here.

Photo: Just five minutes a day behind the gardening trowel can lead to a happier you.

Exercise helps cholesterol. A recent study from the University of Nevada Las Vegas doesn’t come as revelation, rather affirmation. According to HealthDay TV *, 20 men enrolled in a daily 45-minute exercise class over a 20 year period all experienced lowered cholesterol. The men, all sedentary at the start of the program, experienced improvement in their LDL, HDL, total cholesterol and in their triglycerides. They experienced the most improvement during the first year of the program, but continued to witness improvement over the 20 years. The exercise class included stretching, muscle building and aerobics.

Are weight loss camps effective? Wonder if those summer camps for kids with weight issues actually work? At least one does, according to a study by the Saint Louis University School of Medicine. Dr. Nadim Kanafani, assistant professor of pediatrics at the school, studied kids ranging in age from 10 to 18 at Camp Jump Start, a residential weight-loss camp in Imperial, Missouri. The kids did physical activities, participated in group educational sessions and ate three main meals and two snacks a day, all approved by a registered dietitian. The structured environment and peer support helped the kids lose weight (eight pounds, on average), reduce their Body Mass Index (by an average of three points) and improve in various physical pursuits. Read more here.

National Physical Activity Plan. We, the people, now have a National Physical Activity Plan, which was announced last week in Washington. Now, this being a bureaucratic plan it’s hard to tell specifically what the plan is. The “Recreation” component, for instance, calls for government to “Enhance the existing parks and recreation infrastructure with effective policy and environmental changes to promote physical activity.” (More swingsets?) Under “Transportation/Planning,”  there’s a call for “Local, state, and federal agencies [to] use routine performance measures and set benchmarks for active travel (walking, biking, public transit).” (Um … ) I’ll share specifics as I’m able to ferret them out. Or, do your own ferreting here.

You don’t have to be like Lance. You don’t need to win the Tour de France seven times, break the course record for the Leadville 100 or dabble in triathlons on the side to feel good about yourself. This according to a study out of the University of Florida that found that folks who don’t exercise with a major goal in mind can feel just as good about their body image as people obsessed with training. This, the study finds, as 60 percent of American adults are dissatisfied with how they look, a figure that has more than doubled in the past 20 years. Read more here.

And you won’t find Lance in the Giro d’Italia … but you will find the Big 3 Classic, which began Saturday and runs through May 30, on cable, on Universal Sports. If you have Tivo or similar recording capabilities, the Giro makes great background for your workouts — even time on the dread trainer. (If you don’t have cable/Universal, you can follow the race here.) Lance’s Team Radio Shack, btw, is next in action at the Tour de Picardie in France.

There is one alternative that gets short-shrift in this discussion. You can avoid the issue altogether, this lack of healthy choices in the cash-strapped school cafeteria, by having your kids take their own lunch. Make it a joint effort: You lay out the various healthy/fun choices available, they decide what they want to take, you buy it, they pack it and eat it. End of parental hand-wringing and kvetching over what they’re feeding our poor children at school. No more listening to your kids daily recital of the yellow food they had for lunch (corn dog, fries, Mountain Dew).

Don’t say you don’t have time to deal with lunch: You have to go to the store anyway. Don’t say you can’t get your kids to make their own lunch: Once they discover the alternative — no lunch money + no bagged lunch = no lunch — they’ll come around. They can spare 10 minutes of Cartoon Network in the morning to make lunch.

And there’s lots of good advice on the Web about healthy lunch choices and strategies. Here are three sites to get you started:

About.com Key tip: Let your kids take “fun” food — cold pizza, pasta, chips — just keep an eye on portion size.

FamilyFun.com Key tip: Psst, wraps.

epicurious.com Key Tip: Once the kids get used to the idea of taking their lunch, encourage them to get creative with the likes of the Peanut Butter Berry-Wich and Mini Whoopie Pies.

Photo: Back in the ’60s, lunch was always an adventure with Admiral Nelson and Commander Crane.

Goulding and Zinczenko are the writers of the wildly popular “Eat This Not That” series of dietary guides that succinctly and graphically help consumers chose between a Jimmy Dean Sausage, Egg and Cheese Croissant (430 calories, 740 milligrams of sodium, 29 grams of fat and 3.5 grams of transfat) and Jimmy Dean D-Lights Muffin made with Whole Grain, Turkey Sausage, Egg White & Cheese (260 calories, 840 mg sodium, 7 g of fat, 0 g of transfat). Goulding was in town (he splits his time between the office in Manhattan and his retreat on a small lake near Sanford) to catch up with friends and family, and to promote his work educating Americans on what to eat and what not to eat. It’s a vocation he — or those who know him — didn’t see coming when he left Cary High in 1999.

“No one voted me Most Likely to be a Nutritionist,” says Goulding.

He was, however, interested in food. He got his introduction to the big food industry working part-time at Macaroni Grill while at Cary High, thought he might like to be a cook, wrote a cookbook for guys about how to use the kitchen to get girls (it wasn’t published), wound up working as food and nutrition editor for Men’s Health magazine. One day at Men’s Health, the phone rang. It was a senior editor with Rodale, publisher of Men’s Health.

“He said, ‘How would you like to write a book?’” Initially, the notion sounded appealing. But as the “Eat This Not That” concept was explained, he started having doubts. “I’m not so sure this is right for me,” he told friends, who wisely counseled him that you don’t say no to such an offer (he’d already committed the faux pas of asking for the weekend to think it over). He said yes.

Expectations for the first “Eat This, Not That” were modest. “Our first press run was 20,000,” says Goulding. Those went surprisingly fast, he recalls. “Our second was 500,000.” The franchise quickly expanded to include “Cook This Not That,” “Eat This Not That For Kids,” a restaurant version and a special weight-loss version. In May, a beverage version is scheduled to be in book stores. To date, more than 5 million books have been sold in the series, there’s an iPhone app and ETNT is on Twitter.

Goulding talked about the difficulties of getting accurate nutritional analyses (some companies fudge their numbers), about the not-always-complimentary mail he and Zinczenko get (many from people defending their inalienable right to eat a Bloomin’ Onion), about the companies that take offense to having their Bloomin’ Onions portrayed in unflattering terms. Nothing surprising there.

What was surprising, was that some of ETNT’s biggest enemies have come to embrace the concept. His former employer across the parking lot, for instance.

“One day we got a call from Brad Blum, the new CEO at Macaroni Grill,” Goulding began. Macaroni Grill at the time was judged by “Eat This Not That” to be among the unhealthiest restaurants in the nation. With a wry grin, Goulding added, “He wondered if we would like to go to lunch.” Big laugh.

Turned out that Blum wanted to revisit Macaroni Grill’s menu,  introducing healthier options more true to Italian-Mediterranean cuisine. They had lunch with Blum and wound up consulting with the restaurant on its new menu. The Eat This Not That team is currently consulting with another unlikely convert: Hardees/Carl Jr.’s. The fast-food provider has actively celebrated its Thickburger line (two-third-pound Double Thickburger: 1,230 calories, 2,090 milligrams of sodium, 90 grams of fat) through TV ads showing grease dribbling down the chins of rabid consumers.

Not everyone has seen the light. On the table next to him, Goulding had brought examples of five offending restaurant foods, including ETNT’s top artery clogger, Outback’s Aussie Cheese Fries. Dubbed by “Eat This Not That” as The Worst Food in America, the appetizer tops the nutritional charts at 2,900 calories, 182 grams of fat, 240 grams of carbs. (Confession: When he got off work at Macaroni Grill, Goulding says he and his fellow busboy buds would get together and have Aussie Fries and “fruit juice”.)

Most of Sunday’s crowd was familiar with Goulding’s work. Still, such revelations drew gasps from most of the 75 or so assembled. Most, not all.

In the audience was Nick Meglin, a longtime editor at Mad magazine who retired to Durham in 2004.

“When you’re done,” asked Meglin, “can we eat the Aussie Cheese Fries?”

Most involve a short hike, followed by a little talk, maybe another short hike a little more talk. They are not strenuous. They will, however, get you moving.  And if they get you moving to the point you want to move more, I’ve included an option for doing that as well. Events are free unless otherwise noted.

For even more events, visit the state Office of Environmental Education web site.

Friday

Star gazing at the Boulders
Crowders Mountain State Park
Kings Mountain (Charlotte area)
8 p.m.

Doesn’t the weekend technically begin at 5 on Fridays? Which slips this event at the lone bouldering area in the state parks system under the deadline. Meet at the parking area, take a short hike (bring a flashlight or headlamp for the hike out) and check out the constellations.
Move more: You’ll have to come back Saturday to check out Buzzards Roost, where climbing on low rocks without anchors and other protection is allowed. Also: the 6.2-mile Ridgeline Trail, which will take you northeast to King’s Pinnacle, southwest into South Carolina.
Directions here, more info here.

Saturday

2010 Piedmont Earth Fair
Wake Forest University
Winston-Salem
10 a.m.-5 p.m.

There’s no specific physical component to this event (although there are directions for biking to the fair), but you’ll easily put on some miles visiting the 100-plus exhibitors and teaching tents, rambling over to hear the live music (six bands representing everything from Old Time music to “Appalachian Punk”) and checking out the kids exhibits. And yes, while there’s the temptation of food, “The food vendors at the Fair are trying to use as much local produce as possible …” which should translate to fresher and healthier than normal fair fare.
Move more: Stay longer.
Directions here, more info here.

Hike to Sandy Cliff Overlook
Lake James State Park
Nebo
10 a.m.

What better incentive to hike than a vista at trail’s end? This half-mile hike (one mile roundtrip). A ranger shows you the way and shares insights about the lake.
Move more: Lake James has two longer trails, the 1.5-mile Lake Channel Overlook Trail and the 2.2-mile Den Loop Trail.
Directions here, more info here.

Nature Journal Hike — Spring Animal Tracks
Lake Waccamaw State Park
Lake Waccamaw
2 p.m.

The chance to record what you find in the wild — another good incentive that might take your mind off a potentially hot, potentially sweaty hike. Focus of this month’s monthly journal hike is on animal tracks.
Move more: Nothing makes an aspiring walker feel better than racking up the miles, and nowhere is it easier to rack them up than on flat trails, such as the 3/4-mile Sand Ridge Nature Loop, the 2.5-mile Pine Woods Trail or the mile-long Loblolly Loop.
Directions here, more info here.

Environmental Education Week Nature Hike
Mount Mitchell State Park
Burnsville
2 p.m.

In contrast to racking up the flat miles, there’s a certain cache in being able to say you climbed the highest peak east of South Dakota’s Black Hills, something you can say that after attending this 1.5-mile hike on the crest of the mighty Black Mountains.
Move more: Definitely don’t visit Mount Mitchell without heading out on the Black Mountain Crest Trail to 6,637-foot-foot Mount Craig and 6,568-foot Big Tom (the view from which can be seen above). They aren’t far, less than two miles, but it’s challenging hiking.
Directions here, more info here.

Wildflower Walk
Reedy Creek Nature Center
Charlotte
1 p.m.

Pretty things — another reason to hike. Take a “liesurely walk” with a naturalist and discover the story behind all those wildflowers poking through the forest floor.
Move more: In addition to nature, you’ll find an 18-hole disc golf course, two volleyball courts, a basketball court, a playground and swing garden, two softball fields, a soccer field — if you can’t find a reason to move more here, you aren’t looking hard enough.
Directions here, more info here.

Celebrate Earth Day: Get Your Green On
White Deer Park
Garner
9 a.m.-3 p.m.

One of the newest parks around (it opened in November), there’s lots to do here to celebrate Earth Day. Then, play on the new playground, or walk the greenway,  or — just go here to see some of your options.
Move more: Did you watch the video?
Directions here, more info here.

Sunday

Spring Tree ID, Ribbet-ing Frog Calls
Cliffs of the Neuse State Park
Seven Springs
1 p.m., 4 p.m.

Older nature lovers will like the short hike to check out the trees in bloom this spring and for the younger ones who appear glued to the video screen it’s hard to resist the prospect of tromping around in a creek and getting muddy.
Move more: Four hiking trails, all less than a mile, snake out from the parking area.
Directions here,  more info here.

High Shoals Falls.

The 10 Essentials
South Mountains State Park
Connelly Springs (south of Morganton)
2 p.m.

Afraid to go on even a short hike in the woods because you don’t know what to take and how to dress? Learn the 10 essentials from a ranger, then …
Move more: South Mountains is covered with trails; test your mettle on the High Shoals Falls Loop, which goes up and around an 80-foot waterfall. Lots of climbing but you won’t feel a thing thanks to the scenery.
Directions here, more info here.

• Don’t have a stroke. And if you’re a woman, you’ll be less likely to have one if you walk two hours or more a week at a “brisk” pace. This according to a study published in “Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association,” which found that women exercising at this level were 37 percent less likely to have a stroke of any kind than sedentary types. Further, these brisk-paced walkers had a 68 percent lower risk of suffering a hemorrhagic stroke and a 25 percent lower risk of suffering an ischemic stroke. The exact relationship between walking and reduced stroke risk is unclear. The study was conducted as part of the long-term Women’s Health Study, a long-term study of 39,315 female health professionals who are predominantly white and whose average age is 54. Read more here.
• Diet alone isn’t enough (again). More research, this time from the Oregon Health & Science University, shows that cutting back on calories alone isn’t enough to lose a significant amount of weight — you’ve got to exercise, too. In this latest affirmation of the need for diet and sweat, the school studied 18 female rhesus macaque monkeys. The monkeys were put on a high-fat diet for several years, then put back on a low-fat diet with a 30 percent reduction in calories. After a month, they exhibited no significant weight loss. During that time as well, the reduction in calories caused the monkeys to become less active. Another reduction in calories a month later saw the monkeys slack off even more. By comparison, a group of monkeys fed a normal monkey diet and trained to exercise for an hour a day on a treadmill did lose weight. The study offers further support to the belief that when the body receives fewer calories it tends to conserve what it’s getting. Read more here.
• Pregnant women don’t exercise enough. A study at UNC-Chapel Hill finds that fewer than one in four pregnant women get enough exercise — “enough” being at least 30 minutes a day, according to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, or 150 minutes a week, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “Physical activity during pregnancy … may help prevent gestational diabetes, support healthy gestational weight gain and improve mental health,” according to Kelly Everson, research associate professor of epidemiology in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and author of the study. The most common form of exercise for the moms-to-be who did exercise: walking. Read more here.
• Don’t let being critically ill keep you from exercising. Exercise even benefits the critically ill, according to a study done in the medical intensive care unit at Johns Hopkins. 57 critically ill patients were put through 30- to 45-minute exercise sessions, which “included any combination of either leg or arm movements while lying flat in bed, sitting up or standing, or walking slowly in the ICU corridors.” The exercise both sped up recovery times and cut in half the amount of prescription sedatives required per patient. Read more here.

Weight training-related injuries up If you use free weights don’t drop them, especially on yourself. A just-released study conducted by the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital finds that injuries from weight training increased nearly 50 percent between 1990 and 2007, largely the result of males dropping weights on themselves. The study, to be published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, found that of the 970,000 weight training-related injuries recorded during that 18-year span, 82 percent were suffered by males, 47 percent by lifters age 13 to 24. Ninety percent of the injuries involved free weights, 65 percent involved the lifter dropping said free weight on their person. Read more in this Science Daily post. (Similarly, injuries from rock climbing and the use of ladders and hot tubs were also up.

Soccer reduces risk of falls and bone fractures Playing soccer is good for a host of reasons you might not have suspected, according to the current Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports. Research in these articles shows that playing soccer regularly can, according to a report at ScienceDaily.com, increase “both bone mass and bone density, cause a significant improvement in standing postural balance and improve muscle strength. Together, these effects reduce the risk of falls and bone fractures.” Read more here.

The 10-course Last Supper The more recently the Last Supper is depicted, the bigger the meal becomes, according to an analysis of 52 of the most famous paintings of the Last Supper from the book Last Supper. Analysis done by Brian Wansink, John S Dyson Professor of Marketing and of Applied Economics and director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University, and his brother Craig, professor of religious studies at Virginia Wesleyan College, reveals that the more recent the painting, the more food on the plates (not to mention that the plates themselves are two-thirds bigger). Specifically, the entrees were 69 percent bigger and the bread portions 23 percent bigger. The paintings analyzed span 1,000 years. Read more here.

“The average American Adult consumes 115 calories more per day on Friday, Saturday and Sunday than they consume on weekdays.”

(FYI, there are 115 calories in an ounce of peanut butter, a half cup of boiled black beans, a serving of Norwegian Creamed Cabbage and a banana.)