I bike to work most mornings, pulling my son behind me in his Chariot bike stroller.  It’s a pretty flat 2 mile ride, on mostly quiet streets. However,  a short portion of my ride is on a main artery, which happens to include a painted bike lane.  Ironically, the bike lane portion of my ride feels the most dangerous. The bike lane happens to pass directly in front of a local school.  Every morning multiple…

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  Food and beverage advertising to children is a problem.  As I noted earlier this year, the 10 most popular kids’ websites expose kids to 25 million food ads/year, 90% of which are for unhealthy foods.  Canada’s Heart and Stroke Foundation is calling for stricter regulations on children’s advertising, and is asking the federal government to: Enact legislation to restrict commercial food and beverage marketing to children and youth ages 16 and under… This legislation should: afford substantial…

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The Canadian Obesity Network (CON) recently conducted an investigation into Canadians’ access to publicly and privately funded medical care for obesity. The results of the research have been published as a “Report Card on Access to Obesity Treatment for Adults in Canada 2017” and reveal a number of shortcomings when it comes to patient access to adequate obesity management options. The report covered 4 key areas: Access to specialists and interdisciplinary teams for behavioural intervention…

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Today’s post comes from friend and colleague Dr Allana LeBlanc.  You can find more on Dr LeBlanc at the bottom of this post. When will the sugar tax come to Canada? It’s become a question of when and not if we will start taxing sugar sweetened beverages like Coke and Pepsi. Let’s just hope Canadians are a bit quicker on jumping on the bandwagon for this than they were for the implementation of banning trans…

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I’ve never been a huge resistance training person.  I don’t hate it, but I’d much rather go for a jog or bike ride.  And yet I’m making an effort to lift weights on a much more regular basis.  I’ve also been promoting it pretty hard for my parents and other retirement-age folks in my life. Why am I so bullish on resistance training?  The aerobic exercise that I enjoy so much is great for reducing…

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Over the years, the notion of 10,000 daily steps has been frequently espoused as a healthy goal, including by this very blog. However, a new study out of Scotland, published in the International Journal of Obesity, suggested that a whopping 15,000 daily steps may be required to ward off poor health. In the cross-sectional study, 111 non-smoking Glasgow postal workers (55 office workers and 56 walking/delivery workers) had their activity level assessed by wearing activPAL…

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At various points over the past few years, I have been fortunate to basically have a gym as my office.  I’ve worked near treadmills, exercise bikes, light free weights, and a bunch of machines (bench press, leg press, a chin-up bar, etc).  The gyms have always been for research and data collection, but there were plenty of opportunities for those of us working in the lab to pop out and do a quick set almost…

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I like standing desks.*  I have a real one in my office, and am using a homemade one as we speak.  The research on standing desks is still in its infancy, but I think it is quite plausible that they will lead to some health benefits (we’re doing a couple projects on this in my lab at the moment).  The most likely health benefits of a standing desk are improved blood sugar, although research is just…

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