Who would have imagined that children who ate meals with their families were less likely to become fat than those who didn't? New research says for every family meal skipped during a week there's an eight per cent increase in the chances of a child becoming overweight.

Apart from the health benefits of home-cooked meals, what matters is the basic sense of psychological stability that children get from sitting with their family. They feel they have a support system and parents get the opportunity to study problem signs if any. "When children eat with their parents, they tend to control their portions," nutritionist Neelanjana Singh said. "Parents can also watch over them."

This is a relevant information for Indian parents. An AIIMS study last year said roughly 20 per cent of school-going kids in the country were fat. Scientists said today's generation of obese children will live shorter lives than their parents and would be prone to cardiac diseases and hypertension.

Getting children to eat healthy food and get exercise might sound simple, but genetic, cultural and environmental factors behind childhood obesity are complicated. Apart from the genetic makeup, experts blame parents' food habits and cultural differences in portion size. More recently, new and surprising drivers of obesity such as frequency of family meals and sleep schedules have been identified.

While junk food and lack of physical activity are known causes of childhood obesity, irregular sleeping patterns are to be blamed too, experts said. A recent study in the journal Pediatrics found that children who got less than the recommended hours of sleep or had irregular sleeping habits suffered from childhood obesity cardiovascular problems and diabetes.

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There's a secret behind the million-selling success of the Rockabye Baby! brand of lullaby recordings of your favourite rock 'n' roll artists -- none of the company's owners have kids.

"It's part of the success of the product," says Lisa Roth, the music label executive in Silver Lake, California, who launched the brand in 2005. "It speaks to that part of an adult that doesn't cease to exist once you have children and that doesn'tget addressed with typical baby products. If any of us had children, I'm not sure it would work."

The lullabies, which have been made to the music of Van Halen, Coldplay, Pink Floyd, Radiohead and 35 other artists -- a special Canadian-only CD was released this week of the Tragically Hip -- keep the melodies of the original recordings, but replaces instruments such as electric guitars and drums with harps and glockenspiels. It's a formula that keeps the hooks of your favourite pop tunes -- songs like "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen and Weezer's "Island in the Sun" -- eliminates the vocals, and turns bedtime into an opportunity for mom and dad to relive their youth.

"People think we make the songs into lullabies by slowing them down, but actually you keep the original tempo and arrangement," says Roth, 54, who recently pushed through the lullabization of the Kanye West oeuvre. "It's putting together a puzzle: you want to retain the sentiment of the original, but it has to be calm enough to put a baby to bed."

Currently in 1,200 American stores, and another 300 Canadian toy shops, the Rockabye series of baby CDs are transforming Roth's CMH record label. Since the company -- which also produces bluegrass karaoke CDs and The Modern Wedding Collection -- has to pay big licensing fees to the original artists, Roth's expanding the Rockabye Baby! brand into the universe of baby gear, clothes and accessories.

"It won't stop at music, we're working on all kinds of things," Roth says, mentioning that her company's success has spawned a wave of imitation baby rock records. "When we started there wasn't anything like it and now there's any number of copycats, but that's OK -- we've been learning a lot about the baby market over the past six years."

The next few months will see Rockabye Baby! releases covering the music of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Foo Fighters and Depeche Mode. The company has already tackled such unlikely bands as Metallica and AC/DC. "Pretty much after you can make a lullaby out of Black Sabbath, you can do anything," Roth says.

At press time, there were no plans for releasing the Tragically Hip lullaby record in America, but Roth says making the album was a good move for her brand.

"Even when we produce artists that we don't love -- someone's a fan, someone else isn't -- when you approach an artist this way, the music becomes almost something else," Roth says. "It all just becomes interesting music to break down for a child even if we're all just a bunch of rock 'n' rollers out here, and none of us have kids."

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Those ailments, and others not caused by bacteria, don't respond to the drugs. But misuse of antibiotics contributes to drug resistance -- so those same medications might not work in the future when they're really needed.

"Antibiotics are wonderful. There are times you really need them, the question is just being judicious about when we use them," said Betsy Foxman, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan School of Public Health in Ann Arbor who was not involved in the research.

The new study involved a nationally-representative sample of almost 65,000 outpatient visits by kids under 18 in 2006 through 2008. Using medical codes, researchers were able to determine the type of diagnosis kids were given, as well as what kind of drugs, if any, they were prescribed.

In total, doctors prescribed an antibiotic at one in every five visits. Most prescriptions were given out for kids with respiratory ailments, including sinus infections and pneumonia.

Some of those infections are caused by bacteria, and antibiotics are warranted. But almost one-quarter of all antibiotic prescriptions were given to kids with respiratory conditions that probably or definitely do not call for antibiotics -- such as bronchitis, the flu, asthma and allergies.

That translates to more than 10 million antibiotic prescriptions each year that likely won't do any good but might do harm, Dr. Adam Hersh of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and his colleagues reported today in Pediatrics.

Half of all antibiotics prescribed were "broad-spectrum" drugs -- meaning they act against a wide range of bacteria. Those "kill more of the good bacteria in our bodies and can set the child up for infections with antibiotic resistant bacteria down the road," Hersh wrote in an email to Reuters Health.

"In many of these instances antibiotics are not indicated at all," he added. Broad-spectrum antibiotics include macrolides and certain types of cephalosporins and penicillins. Foxman said that wiping out the non-harmful bacteria in the intestines has been linked to asthma and, recently, to obesity.

"We think of antibiotics as being wholly beneficial, but they are not very specific, they hit everything in your body," she said. "By making our microbes that are supposed to be with us disappear, we can be causing other health problems we don't know about."

And even when the drugs are prescribed for just a few days, giving them to lots of kids unnecessarily raises the risk of antibiotic-resistant infections in the kids themselves, and for society as a whole, she added.

"It's been known for a very long time... that people are prescribing antibiotics for upper respiratory infections where they have no benefit," Foxman told Reuters Health. "To me this wasn't a big surprise, though it's certainly disturbing."

Hersh said that there are a number of reasons why doctors might prescribe antibiotics when they're not likely to help. "One reason overuse occurs is because the diagnosis is often unclear -- this is common with ear infections. The decision is made to prescribe an antibiotic even though the diagnosis isn't certain, just 'to be on the safe side,'" he said.

In those cases, a "wait and see" approach in which the kid comes back to the office a couple days later might avoid an unnecessary prescription, he added.

"If your doctor suggests an antibiotic prescription, for instance for an ear infection, ask how certain the diagnosis is. If the diagnosis is still a little unclear, ask if it would be safe to wait a day or two with close follow up rather than starting the antibiotic right away," Hersh advised.

Dr. Aditya Gaur, who has studied antibiotic prescribing at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, said that parents should ask doctors why their kids are getting whatever particular medication, including antibiotics, they're being prescribed.

"Parents and families should be part of the decision and ask why (something) is being done," Gaur, who wasn't linked to the study, told Reuters Health. They should also know "not to expect an antibiotic every time an infection is diagnosed."

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How would your child react if you told them you stayed up late after they went to bed on Halloween night, and devoured their stash of candy?  That's what late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel asked his fans to find out. He called on viewers to give their children the bad news, record the results, and send the videos to the show.

The results -- while admittedly cruel -- were hilarious. While most children instantly broke down in tears, some became angry and others scolded their parents for their bad behaviour. "Oh, good for you. Now you're probably going to get a belly ache," says one boy, clad in red pyjamas decorated with white dogs. "That's why you shouldn't eat so much candy." He adds: "Did you see how much I had? I went to a lot of houses."

Another is relieved to find that he still has one package of Nerds left in his candy collection after his pregnant mom tells him she ate it all. Still another boy, shirtless, flies into a rage and pounds the wall with his fist.

And in one of the cutest videos a little girl bursts into tears and shouts "Dad, you're ugly!"All the tears and hilarity made us wonder, what's your funniest childhood Halloween moment?

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Erik Spoelstra went to a social media class, scribbled his signature on the back of a few shirts, shook outstretched hands and happily posed for photographs. The schedule says Spoelstra should have been leading the Miami Heat against the Orlando Magic on Thursday night. Instead, he was at middle school, trying to glean something positive from just another day in the ongoing NBA lockout.

The Heat coach shadowed a principal and sat in on classes, part of a daylong series of events the team put together at a school about 15 miles from the arena where Spoelstra should have been working.
"I miss it. We all miss it," Spoelstra said. "But it's fun to be out here and see all the kids excited about this program that we feel so strongly about."NBA teams have tried plenty of community outreach events during the lockout in an effort to stay connected with at least some segment of the fan base.

Whenever the lockout ends, Spoelstra will likely be ready to get to work fast. He and his staff took some vacation time after Miami's loss to the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA Finals, but since August the group has been studying film of the Heat and other teams. The staff also has been going on the road to see how a handful of coaches — some at the college level, sometimes even from other sports — organize their various programs.

"We've had a lot of time to do that this summer," Spoelstra said. "Try to get better and stay active, keep engaged and do what we can to not only improve as coaches — you don't get this opportunity very often to study other philosophies — but also find ways to improve on what we did last year."

Heat assistant coaches and staff spent time on the school's outdoor courts Thursday running kids through drills. Inside, students got a chance to record radio and TV interviews and read off teleprompters, write articles and news releases, get conditioning tips from the team trainers, maintain a website, paint a mural on the school wall, even study moves the team's dancers use during routines.

"Kids start to think about cool jobs and initially you of the cool job being the star player in the commercial, a visible job," Spoelstra said. "But really, there's so many opportunities that are cool to young students and some of the things they learned today about social media, about music, about (public relations) … some of them will probably be standing there like you guys, holding a camera or asking questions."
The Heat sent their broadcasters, some executives, in-game staff and other employees to the school to talk to kids about various careers in sports. Players were noticeably absent, of course. Because of the lockout, the Heat cannot have any unapproved communication or interaction with players, or even speak about them publicly.

So when asked about a comment Dwyane Wade made this week on the SiriusXM radio show hosted by Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, where the 2006 NBA Finals MVP revealed that he believed the Heat failed to win the 2011 title because they were playing to spite their naysayers, Spoelstra could not respond in any way.

Asked a different way, without mention of Wade, Spoelstra could answer. "We got better every single month and not every team can say that," Spoelstra said. "We came together with nine new players with a big goal, but we also wanted to make sure that we're progressing and working to get better. "I think that'll help us this season, the fact that we spent almost nine months together on that journey and the journey didn't end. It's just beginning."

He also delivered a simple message to fans anxious for the lockout to end. "Be patient. We're close," Spoelstra said. "We all miss it, but we'll all be back at this soon. And our fans mean the world to us. That's why we're trying to get out in the community as much as possible, to connect. It's not the same as playing, but our fans are our lifeline. They fuel us, the players and the staff. We'll be back at it."

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This article is excerpted from a talk John S. Hutton delivered last month at the Cincinnati Nature Center. In a single generation, as through a massive software upgrade, childhood has been transformed.

This upheaval is unprecedented, eclipsing our own evolution and leaving us fumbling for a user's guide: cable TV in the 1970s, video games in the 1980s, Internet in the 1990s, smart phones, social media, ebooks, apps and broadband convergence of all of these in the 2000s.

We - and more alarmingly our kids - cannot escape technology anymore, despite fundamental human needs and stages that are not always compatible. Most grownups recall relatively low-tech childhoods: books, backyards, even times when there was literally nothing on TV. Boredom was not considered life-threatening; imagination was a reliable remedy. In the 1960s, the average age kids started watching TV was 2.8 years. It is now 9 months and decreasing.

A 2009 Kaiser Foundation survey found that kids 8-18 watch screen-based media on average 7½ hours per day, 11 hours per day if device "multitasking" is factored in. A recent study from Common Sense Media showed kids under 2 watch more than 3 hours per day, three to nine times more time than they spend being read to. About 70 percent of American kids have at least one video screen in their bedroom, and more than 30 percent of kids under 2 have one. The only activities that rival screen-based media come at school, where computers are ubiquitous, and sleep, which is increasingly challenged by it.

This screen time explosion represents a triumph of marketing over public health. Despite advocacy by pediatric and parenting groups, e-media for young children have grown into a multi-billion dollar industry, enchanting grown-ups and kids alike. It has cast an invisibility cloak over evidence-based guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics, in effect since 1999.

Notable among them are: discourage any screen time for kids under 2, viewing for older kids limited to one-two hours of quality programming, and no video screens in children's bedrooms.

According to a recent survey, however, less than 10 percent of parents were familiar with these, and only 15 percent had discussed them with their doctor.

While "electronic babysitting" is a common explanation for heavy use, by far the top reason parents purchase screen-based products for their kids is a single word: education. Stricken by unrealistic expectations and fears of falling behind in the Internet Age, parents believe that screen-based media are not only benign, but necessary for learning.

Marketers have seized this, as a stroll through any big box baby/toy section attests. This "educational halo" provides peace of mind as caregivers perform household duties, rest, or update Facebook pages as mellow tots gaze and learn about the rain forest. Unfortunately - and deceptively - with the possible exception of Sesame Street for older kids, no educational claims made by any of these "smart baby" products are backed by evidence. Quite the contrary: There is mounting evidence that early and excessive use can be harmful.

There are two main categories of screen-based media marketed to children: virtual and academic. The former is a surreal, expanding catalog of e-versions of beloved growing-up icons: pets, playmates, adventures, even story time with human readers as optional. The Baby Einstein franchise is a prime example, promising mastery of water, the sky, and the world without prying eyes from the screen. Ironic, since the real Einstein did just fine with puddles and star gazing.

The academic category is packed with curricula and gadgets aglow with visions of genius babies learning more, younger, faster. Claims range from unrealistic - geometry for toddlers - to silly - "read like a Jedi!" - to near-fraudulent. The popular Your Baby Can Read! DVD series exemplifies all three, promising infants who "read before they can speak," confusing basic language acquisition with reading and suggesting a novel resume item.

Electronic toys employ a similar strategy, creating an illusion of learning while kids bang noisy buttons. One of the latest - baby apps - offers to liberate "Digital Natives" from crayons, pages, and keyboards in favor of smudge screens, uploading them as small grown-ups into the New Economy.

Children are not small grown-ups - a happy thing. Old Economy developmental stages are hardwired into their DNA. Key drivers of learning are as analog as ever: interaction with caring, engaged grown-ups and ample opportunity to explore the world in a multi-sensorial, child-fueled, sense-of-wonder way. Genuine creativity, curiosity, and the learning they foster flow from simple ingredients: a piece of paper, a cardboard box, blocks, books, time. If technology were required to create tech-savvy adults, Steve Jobs could never have grown up to found Apple.

Electronic media are not only an inferior means for children to experience and learn about their world, they can be toxic. This is especially true for kids under 2. Paralleling the rise in use are pediatric epidemics, including obesity, ADHD and academic difficulty, each with screen time as a risk factor.

For example, bedroom TV is a major and preventable contributor to child obesity. Inadequate sleep, strongly linked to viewing behavior, increases risk for almost every issue of concern to pediatricians. Risks are dose-dependent, with more and earlier use predicting worse outcomes. Reducing screen time and substituting active behaviors, however, reduces these risks.

That young children would not benefit from electronic media the way grown-ups do is not unexpected. Developing brains, wired to process "the real world," are simply not ready. Anything that diminishes the quality of human interaction tends to impair development.

By displacing active pursuits, promoting dependence and lowering an anesthetic veil over the robust adventure that is early childhood, e-media mostly get in the way. And so, contrary to trends in the economy, here is one job too important to be outsourced: parenting.

Technology is here to stay. Eventually, all kids will be immersed in it, with no turning back. Rather than succumbing to the angst-amped allure of devices and handing them to babies, we should view accessibility and ease of use as assurance that waiting is not only OK, but crucial. Cool, even.

Our kids are not at risk for falling behind in computer skills, nor are they likely to ever be. Where they are at risk for falling behind is in "natural" skills. Such skills are central to becoming a functional grown-up: social ease, connection with the natural world, empathy, persistence, invention, imagination.

These tend to be taken for granted - "all kids are creative" - but this is wishful thinking. Nurturing a child's "natural" skills requires consistent attention to developmental needs and stages involving brain, body and senses. It is imperative - and fun - to unplug, tune in, and embrace the real world with our children.

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That's the (incorrect) reason why Facebook has a minimum age requirement, according to parents in a peer-reviewed study, "Why Parents Help Their Children Lie to Facebook About Age: Unintended Consequences of the 'Children's Online Privacy Protection Act' Other wrong responses included "because it’s more for adults," "children don’t need to have a social media presence"  and "due to adult content and language." Still, "I don't know" was the most common response from parents who were even aware Facebook has an age restriction. Of the 1,007 parents polled (all with kids aged 10-13), only two referenced the correct answer: "Privacy." More specifically, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

Enacted by U.S. Congress in 1998 (practically the Paleozoic era of the Internet), COPPA requires commercial websites to obtain parental permission before collecting the personal info of any user under the age of 13. Facebook and other popular social networks avoid COPPA's costly, cumbersome restrictions by simply restricting user age.

Thirteen years later, parents know little about the government restrictions meant to protect their kids' privacy, and many allow their children to lie about their ages to join Facebook, while losing the intended protections of the government.

That's not how it's supposed to work, according to the study which published these findings: Half of parents in the study reported that their child is on Facebook, even in cases where children do not meet the legal age requirement for use of the site.

Among parents of children who are old enough to be on Facebook — the parents of 13– and 14–year–olds — almost three quarters (72 percent) report that their child uses the site.

Almost a fifth (19 percent) of respondents who were reporting on their 10–year–old child’s online experiences also noted that the child has a Facebook account. This number increases to nearly a third (32 percent) for children age 11 and over half (55 percent) for 12–year–olds. While only 53 percent of parents believe that there is a minimum age, most (89 percent) parents stated that they believe that there "should" be a minimum age for Facebook use.

Of the 89 percent who believe that there should be a minimum age, the average age that they suggest is 14.9, which is considerably higher than the current minimum age (13). Interestingly, this age is also higher than what these same parents suggest is an appropriate age for a child to join Facebook: 14.

But it's not Facebook and other such sites that need to change, or even parents, the study concludes. It's COPPA. For the most part, Facebook and other social networks respect COPPA by promptly dumping any account tied to an underage user. "Facebook removes 20,000 people a day, people who are underage," Facebook privacy czar Mozelle Thompson asserted in March, following a study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project that found nearly half of all 12-year-olds in the U.S. are using social network sites.

"If you are reporting a child’s account registered under a false date of birth, and the child’s age is reasonably verifiable as under 13, we will promptly delete the account. If the reported child’s age is not reasonably verifiable as under 13, then we may not be able to take action on the account," Thompson said.

In May, Consumer Reports said that 7.5 million Facebook users are under age 13, and "a majority of parents of kids 10 and under seemed largely unconcerned by their children’s use of the site.” Further, the magazine's survey found "found that their accounts were largely unsupervised by their parents, exposing them to malware or serious threats such as predators or bullies."

These findings don't differ much from the new study:

Although many sites restrict access to children, our data show that many parents knowingly allow their children to lie about their age — in fact, often help them to do so — in order to gain access to age–restricted sites in violation of those sites’ Terms of Service (TOS). This is especially true for general–audience social media sites and communication services such as Facebook, Gmail, and Skype, which allow children to connect with peers, classmates, and family members for educational, social, or familial reasons.

Parents equate age restrictions with maturity, and many considered that the litmus test as to whether they allowed their kids to violate Facebook's Terms of Service by lying about their age to join, according to the study. It also found that parents are indeed concerned about privacy and online safety issues, but they also may not understand the risks that children face or how their data or how their data are used. "
Perhaps parental unawareness of privacy issues speaks well of COPPA's initial effectiveness. "COPPA has succeeded both in stopping some egregious predatory data practices and in raising some level of awareness of the issue of collecting data about children," the study points out. "The FTC has actively enforced COPPA, leveraging civil penalties against those who fail to obtain parental consent or ineffectively implement its provisions." 

Of course, when kids lie about their age to get on Facebook, their personal data is collected, no parental consent needed. Indeed, a lot has changed since COPPA launched in 1998. "Social network sites, mobile communication technology, geo–locative data (i.e., a child’s physical location as known to a Web service or mobile device), and interactive media," are the examples cited in 2010 by the FTC calling for public comments revisiting COPPA.

"Perverts" will always be an Internet danger parents need to be concerned about. "Adult content and language" is now unavoidable in any media form, and arguably "a social media presence" is now a fact of life. Laws can't replace parents when it comes to safely shepherding children through the unavoidable Internet, but there online privacy has its place for both children and adults.

As the government continues to wrestle with Internet regulation and online privacy, the study points out that age restriction — given both the difficulty in online age verification and parental willingness to allow kids to lie — is not a realistic solution. Instead, the study proposes that "policy–makers shift away from privacy regulation models that are based on age or other demographic categories and, instead, develop universal privacy protections for online users."

Note:"Why Parents Help Their Children Lie to Facebook About Age: Unintended Consequences of the 'Children's Online Privacy Protection Act' (available from FirstMonday.org) is authored by Berkman Center for Internet & Society members danah boyd, Eszter Hargittai, Jason Schultz, and John Palfrey.

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From 2008 to 2010, children's and teens' exposure to television ads for soda doubled, according to a new report from the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University. And beverage companies targeted black and Hispanic kids more than others in recent ads, the report found.

Commercials for Coke and Dr. Pepper products led the increase. Pepsi actually showed young audiences 22 percent fewer commercials for its products in that same time period.

Under a voluntary agreement, beverage companies have pledged to improve advertising directed to kids. But "our results clearly show that the beverage industry's self-regulatory pledges are not working," says Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center.

 The American Beverage Association takes issue with the report's conclusions. "This report is another attack by known critics in an ongoing attempt to single out one product as the cause of obesity when both common sense and widely accepted science have shown that the reality is far more complicated," writes president and chief executive officer Susan Neely in a statement.

Neely also points to research documenting a dramatic change in food and beverage advertising during children's programming.

Between 2004 and 2010, advertisements for soft drinks decreased by 96 percent, according to a study conducted by Georgetown Economic Services. It also found that, during the same time period, ads for fruit and vegetable juices increased by 199 percent. (The study was sponsored by the food and beverage industry.)

The beverage industry also says the new Rudd report does not adequately differentiate between ads directed to children (think: Nickelodeon's Back at the Barnyard) and marketing to teens and general audiences (think: Dancing With the Stars). Lots of programs capture adolescent audiences, but are not considered to be children's programming

Beverage companies currently follow guidelines of the Children's Advertising Review Unit of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, the self-regulatory body for children's advertising. But the industry also played a part in shaping those guidelines to suit their business model.

The Rudd Center, however, would like to see the government place strict regulations on companies advertising unhealthy foods, like sugary beverages, to children. The Federal Trade Commission says that, together with the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it is developing "a set of principles to guide industry efforts to improve the nutritional profile of foods marketed directly to children ages 2-17 and to tap into the power of advertising and marketing to support healthful food choices." But so far, it looks like those guidelines are likely to be voluntary, too.

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That may change now that I've got You Rules Chores on my iPhone. This clever new app turns household chores into a game, rewarding each kid a designated number of coins for each completed job. Whoever finishes the week's chores first is the winner. (Of course, we all know who the real winners are: mom and dad.)

The app features cute graphics and music, and after a parent gets set up as the "referee," each kid gets to choose an avatar (from only six available, alas). Next, you create a chore list, using a supplied selection of common ones (make bed, fold laundry, etc.) and/or your own additions. Each chore earns one, three, or five coins depending on difficulty, though you can also assign your own number.

The only slightly challenging part about using You Rules Chores is setting up the calendar for each and every chore and assigning them to each kid. Fortunately, this is pretty much a one-time setup hassle.
As chores are completed (and verified by the ref), each avatar moves up the ladder toward the weekly finish line (and earns "powers" and gadgets). If you have competitive kids, they may enjoy racing to see who can get done first. And, of course, it's up to you to decide what the reward is for finishing: a toy, an allowance, getting to sleep inside the house for another week, or whatever.

I haven't had the chance to put this to the test on my kids yet, though I suspect the app would work better with slightly younger ones. Even so, You Rules Chores is an impressive and potentially life-changing tool for families. Definitely worth the $3.99 price of admission.

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Wash your hands. Communicable diseases hitch rides on hands to your nose, mouth or the food you prepare. Hand sanitizers are a good alternative when hand washing is not possible. Use tissues or an elbow to cover a cough or sneeze. To maintain a healthy weight, balance calories eaten with calories burned during physical activities.

Eat a varied diet that is high in fruits and vegetables, lean protein and whole grains, but low in sugars and saturated fats. Watch portion sizes and limit sugary or alcoholic beverages. Activity helps your heart and builds muscle and bones, while reducing fat storage. Physical activity improves strength, balance, mood, posture and sleep, and it even reduces risk of injury.

Walking just two miles a day increases life expectancy. Increase your fitness level with a variety of activities, especially those you enjoy and can do on a regular basis. Encourage children to play. They need two hours of activity daily to be healthy, and active play is the best way.

Don't smoke or spend time in smoky air. Tobacco and secondhand smoke are the leading causes of premature death, mainly from heart disease and cancer. Tobacco smoke makes Kids sick with respiratory problems and ear infections, and it can be lethal to infants. Don't allow smoking indoors, in cars or around children. Quitting smoking improves quality and length of life. If you smoke, quit. If you can't do it alone, get help.

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