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Jan. 3, 2003 -- Houston is the couch potato capital of the U.S. and Honolulu is the fittest city, say the editors of Men's Fitness magazine.

The "America's Fattest City" award goes to Houston for the third year, uh, running. The ratings are based on a major city's score in several categories such as fruit/vegetable consumption, sports participation, smoking, drinking, air quality, and percentage of overweight/sedentary residents.

"Given the region's climate (hot and humid), air quality (abysmal), and relative lack of outdoor recreation, staying active presents a Texas-sized challenge," the magazine states. "And with its love of junk food, Houston is a vastrodome of bad nutrition."

If you don't live in Houston, don't let out your belt just yet. The annual ratings are meant as a wake-up call to stop what the CDC calls a national epidemic of obesity. Two in every three Americans have a serious weight problem.

Here's the magazine's list of America's 10 fattest cities:

1. Houston
2. Chicago
3. Detroit
4. Philadelphia
5. St. Louis
6. Cleveland
7. Atlanta
8. Columbus, Ohio
9. Dallas
10. Charlotte, N.C.

And its list of the 10 fittest cities:

1. Honolulu
2. Seattle
3. San Francisco
4. Colorado Springs, Col.
5. San Diego
6. Portland, Ore.
7. Denver
8. Virginia Beach, Va.
9. Tucson, Ariz.
10. Sacramento, Calif.

May 28, 2002 -- Here's more good news about fruits and veggies. "Five a day" can lower your blood pressure, greatly reducing risk of heart disease.

In a six-month study involving nearly 700 people, half were asked to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables every day; half served as controls and didn't change their diet.

The results: Those who ate the good stuff had higher levels of numerous healthy antioxidants than those who didn't.

Also: "significant decreases" in blood pressure were seen in the fruit-and-veggie group, reports Andrew Neil, PhD, a public health researcher at the University of Oxford, England. His study appears in this week's issue of The Lancet.

"The falls in blood pressure in our study ... would substantially reduce cardiovascular disease," he writes. His results match those of a larger study, which showed lower rates of high blood pressure in people who followed a similar five-a-day plan.

Most of the people participating in his study were women about 46 years old, and in the upper socioeconomic classes; 16% of the study participants were smokers, he reports. Neither group was advised to reduce fat intake; and the researchers saw no change in total cholesterol levels and only a small increase in body weight, he says.

"Therefore, the fall in blood pressure achieved in our study is unlikely to be attributable to reduced fat intake or changes in physical activity," writes Neil. "The reduction in blood pressure probably resulted from increased potassium intake, and possibly from some reduction in sodium, although participants were not advised specifically to reduce salt intake."

Here are some tips adapted from the 5 A Day For Better Health program -- a national nutrition effort to encourage Americans to eat five or more servings of fruits and vegetables a day for better health:

• Wake up to fruit. Drink a glass of 100% fruit juice or incorporate a helping of fruit into your breakfast every day.
• Think "fruit" or "vegetable" when snacking. Munch on a handful of carrots or a piece of fruit when you get the urge to snack.
• Keep the pantry packed with easy-to-prepare dried, canned, or frozen fruits and vegetables.
• Make them visible. You're more likely to eat fruits and vegetables when they are easily accessible. Wash some carrots or celery sticks and keep them close at hand in the refrigerator. Put clean fruit out for the family to snack on.
• Use the microwave to your advantage. It's a great (and convenient) way to quickly prepare vegetables for meals.

Visit the 5 A Day site at http://dccps.nci.nih.gov/5aday/ for a wide variety of simple, easy-to-make recipes.

If you've got diabetesdiabetes, the right meal plan can help you keep blood sugar under control. Fruits and vegetables, lean protein, whole grains, and low-fat dairy products -- even sweets now and then -- all have a place in your plan.

"A meal plan provides a specific approach to controlling blood sugar," says Dianne Davis, RD, LDN, CDE, a dietitian with the Vanderbilt Eskind Diabetes Center in Nashville, Tenn. "If you have diabetes, a meal plan is necessary."

That's because a meal plan helps ensure you eat a balanced diet high in fiber and low in fats. It can also "help you lose weight, by controlling portion sizes and calories," Davis says.

Which Diabetes Meal Plan Is Right for You?

Your lifestyle and the type of diabetes treatment you're getting -- whether you're taking premeal insulin or not -- will determine the type of meal plan best for you, says Davis.

Carbohydrates, proteins, and fats are all factored into a plan. But carbs are an especially important component since they have the biggest impact on blood sugar.

"Your meal plan can also include your favorite foods," Davis adds. "No food is off-limits -- it's a matter of how much you eat, when you eat it, and what it will do to your blood sugar."

With that in mind -- and understanding you should talk with your doctor before making big changes in your diabetes diet -- here are four meal-planning systems.

The Diabetes Food Pyramid

The diabetes food pyramid is similar to the USDA food pyramid you see on food labels. It is a pyramid in which a healthy diet means eating more grains, fruits, and vegetables, and less meat, sweets, and fats.

The diabetes food pyramid's general recommendations are:

• Grains, beans, and starchy vegetables: 6 or more servings/day. One serving: 1 slice bread; 1/2 small bagel; 1/2 cup cooked cereal, pasta, rice; 3/4 cup ready-to-eat cereal; 1/2 cup cooked beans, corn, peas.
• Fruits: 2-4 servings daily. One serving: 1 medium-size fresh fruit; 1/2 cup canned fruit; 1/2 cup fruit juice.
• Vegetables: 3-5 servings a day. One serving: 1 cup raw vegetable; 1/2 cup vegetable juice.
• Meat, Fish, Cheese: 2-3 servings/day. One serving: 2-3 ounces cooked lean meat, skinless poultry, or fish; I egg; 2 tablespoons peanut butter; 2-3 ounces cheese.
• Milk and Yogurt: 2-3 servings daily. One serving: 1 cup (8 ounces) milk or yogurt.
• Fats, Sweets, and Alcohol: eat these in small amounts. One serving: 1 teaspoon butter, margarine, or mayonnaise; 1 tablespoon cream cheese or salad dressing; 1/2 cup ice cream.

Combined foods, like eggplant lasagna, for example, will include servings from several food groups (1 vegetable, 1 meat, 1 fat).

This meal system has limitations, says Davis. "When you follow the diabetes food pyramid, you are not controlling specific grams of carbs and might not be able to achieve very tight blood sugar control," she tells WebMD. "However, the pyramid helps you see which foods are carbohydrates -- to get you acquainted with them."

The sun is shining, temperatures are rising. Summer is the time to shed layers of clothes, as well as some pounds. You could opt for a stringent diet regime, but what about simply enjoying all the wonderful foods the season brings? You'll still slim down, and do wonders for your health.

It's a natural trend to eat lighter during the summer, and you can easily do so without feeling deprived. If you follow the U.S. government's 2005 dietary guidelines of four-and-a-half cups of fruits and vegetables and three servings of fat-free or low-fat dairy each day, you'll be getting plenty of naturally low-cal foods that are high in fiber, calcium, and important nutrients.

"Fiber helps in weight control because it promotes a feeling of satisfaction or satiety," explains Registered Dietitian Cheryl Orlansky, of the Computer Science Corporation. "High-fiber foods, eaten consistently, prevent that rebound effect of feeling full one minute and looking for something else to eat the next. It also helps modulate blood sugars by slowing down the digestion of sugars to prevent a quick surge into the bloodstream."

Much of summer's bounty has extra nutritional benefits you may not be aware of. Fruits and vegetables contain antioxidants and other phytonutrients that may slow aging, protect against cancer and stroke, improve blood pressure, and keep your heart healthy. And just about all are low-calorie, so your waistline stays in check, another big health benefit.

Ready to slim down with summer foods? Start your summer "diet" with these.

Indeed, the year 2000 was a very good year for wine makers -- and not just because it brought a bumper crop of cabernets, zinfandels, and chardonnays. Evidence of the far-reaching health benefits of wine continued to pour in from researchers around the world.

Here's a review of the good news for wine makers -- and wine lovers:

A Healthier Heart

Several reports in 2000 confirmed the glad tidings that wine -- in moderation, of course -- reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease and heart attacks. In the September issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, for instance, Swedish researchers at the Karolinska Institute reported that, compared to teetotalers, light drinkers who consumed wine cut their risk of dying prematurely by almost one third, and wine drinkers as a group had significantly lower mortality from cardiovascular disease and cancer. Actually, drinking any kind of alcoholic beverage helped, the scientists found. But by far the biggest benefit accrued to wine drinkers.

What's more, scientists are beginning to understand how wine may bestow its salutary benefits. For starters, according to findings published in the January 2000 issue of European Heart Journal, this most ancient of beverages appears to dilate arteries and increase blood flow, thus lowering the risk of the kind of clots that cut off blood supply and damage heart muscles.

In addition, the fruit of the vine appears to boost levels of HDL, the "good" cholesterol, and helps prevent LDL, or bad cholesterol, from causing damage to the lining of arteries. In a study published in the May 2000 issue of the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behavior, scientists at the Institute for Research in Extramural Medicine in Amsterdam tested 275 men and women around the age of 32. Those who imbibed the equivalent of a glass or two of wine each day had significantly higher levels of "good" cholesterol because they remove the "bad" artery-clogging LDLs before they have a chance to choke blood vessels. Indeed, wine seems to facilitate that process, making it easier for HDLs to hustle their dangerous counterparts out of the bloodstream.

Yet even when LDLs remain behind in the arteries, substances in wine called phenols appear to help prevent the bad cholesterol from causing injury. In the November 2000 Journal of Nutrition and Biochemistry, Italian researchers from the National Institute for Food and Nutrition Research reported that phenols seem to limit the oxidation of LDLs, making them less capable of damaging the linings of arteries and, therefore, less able to set the stage for cardiovascular disease, like heart disease and stroke.

A Shield Against Cancer

Wine also may protect against several forms of another common killer: cancer. It turns out that the same phenolic compounds that lower heart disease risk also may slow the growth of breast cancer cells, according to findings reported by scientists at the University of Crete in Greece in the June 2000 issue of Journal of Cellular Biochemistry. Phenols also were shown to suppress the growth of prostate cancer cells. And French scientists found evidence that an antioxidant in wine called resveratrol can put the brakes on the growth of liver cancer cells, according to a report in the July-August 2000 issue of Oncology Reports.

There also was a report that wine -- particularly red wine -- might help ward off oral cancer. Researchers from the University of Missouri School of Dentistry discovered that resveratrol and another antioxidant called quercetin may inhibit the growth of oral cancer cells. Their findings, published in the June 2000 Journal of the American Dental Association, note that red wine is loaded with a slew of other antioxidants that seem to boost its cancer-fighting abilities.

March 17, 2004 -- "Do it now," Americans like to say. But we're more likely to be talking about eating a pizza than working out.

And that's why we're so fat, argue economist John Komlos, PhD, of the University of Munich, Germany, and colleagues. In a provocative paper, the researchers find that Americans started getting fat about the same time they stopped planning for the future.

Their major evidence: As Americans began spending more and saving less of their income, their weight began to rise. The less we save for the future, the more weight we gain. People living in countries that that save more of their income are less obese. The findings appear in the current issue of the Journal of Biosocial Science.

"People have tried to look at a lot of reasons why Americans are getting so overweight. But nobody has thought about the idea of connecting it to impatience," Komlos tells WebMD. "If you are willing to forgo present satisfaction for future benefits, you are patient. If, however, you want your satisfaction right now, then you are going to have that extra dessert and that extra ice cream and you are not going to be able to forgo the pleasures of today."

Obesity: The Future Is Now

The future, said French novelist Gustave Flaubert, is the worst thing about the present. Americans solve this dilemma by simply ignoring the future. Economists would say Americans have a "high rate of time preference." In plain language, this means we ignore future health risks and maximize current consumption.

Such people are impatient, says study co-author Barry Bogin, PhD, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

"When it comes to spending money, they say, 'Let's go out and buy the stuff I want.' When it comes to food, they say, 'If they put it all in front of me now, I will eat it,'" Bogin tells WebMD.

By now, everybody knows that if you eat less and exercise more, you'll lose weight. Keep it up, and you will be more healthy. But that means valuing the future so much that you'll shove your plate aside and make time to go jogging or to work out at a gym. Fewer and fewer Americans do this.

"All you have to do is get out and exercise for an hour, but people won't do that because of their time preference," Bogin says. "They say, 'Why invest an hour? I should be writing another paper, doing more work, watching this thing on TV -- whatever seems important right now."

A widespread phenomenon such as obesity has no single cause, notes study co-author Patricia K. Smith, PhD, an economist at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

"People have to think about how what they do now affects the future -- about what [they] will do about the future," Smith says.

And that's getting harder and harder for more and more of us. Even something as seemingly innocuous as watching television becomes part of the problem.

"We know that when people watch TV, they eat junk food more than if they were reading or listening to music," Bogin says. "It gets complex here. Does TV cause obesity? No. But a combination of poverty, low education, watching TV, the hopelessness of being poor in a rich nation, it all adds together and raises your time preference, and you say, 'Who cares about the future? I'm going to eat the whole pizza right now.'"

May 2, 2005 -- Loneliness may hamper the immune system, which is needed to fight off illness.

That's what Carnegie Mellon University psychology graduate student Sarah Pressman, MS, and colleagues found when they studied college freshmen coping with their first semester away from home.

The freshmen who felt the loneliest and most socially isolated had the weakest immune response to one component of the flu virus, says Pressman.

The results -- published in May's Health Psychology -- show that loneliness and social isolation can have an impact and that the first semester of college can be "really stressful," Pressman tells WebMD.

Emotional Feeling, Physical Effect

College students aren't the only ones whose health may suffer with those feelings. "Loneliness and social isolation have previously been associated with immune detriments," says Pressman.

"As you get older, the immune system doesn't work as well," she says, noting that older people's social networks sometimes thin as friends and family move away or die.

A study of 180 senior citizens found an association between loneliness and heart disease. That report appeared in the December 2002 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Campus Study

Pressman's study included 83 first-semester college students. All were healthy and got their first-ever flu shots on campus, along with the rest of their class.

Researchers often use students' response to flu shots as a measure of immunity. "The nice thing is it's a bit more relevant than a blood draw and looking at circulating antibodies," says Pressman.

Two days before the flu shot, the students were given palm-held computers that prompted them to rate how lonely and isolated they were feeling at that moment on a scale of one to four. The computer tests popped up four times each day for about two weeks.

The students also wrote down the initials of all the people they had contact with at least once every two weeks.

Pressman and colleagues grouped the students in two ways: by degree of loneliness (low, medium, or high), and by social-network size (smaller, medium, or larger).

Lonely Students, Weaker Immune Response

Blood samples showed that the loneliest and most isolated students had weaker immune responses to the flu vaccine.

The weakest immune response was seen in students who were both lonely and isolated, says Pressman. Results were similar for male and female students, she says.

Loneliness and isolation seemed to work independently, says Pressman. Loneliness was also associated with poorer sleep habits and less sleep; Pressman is currently writing a paper about that.

Loneliness, Isolation Are Different

Ever feel lonely in a crowd or content with few people around? It's possible to feel lonely but not isolated and vice versa, says Pressman.

"Social network size wasn't correlated with loneliness," she says. The number of people the students reported having contact with "had nothing to do with how lonely they felt."

"It's not so much the number of people; it's the level of closeness that you feel," Pressman continues. "It really is your perception. If your social network is meeting your needs, then you won't feel lonely."

Familiar Feelings

Pressman says she "absolutely" can relate to the feelings expressed by the students in her study. She remembers feeling that way when she moved far from home to go to college.

Her solution was to get involved on campus, becoming the vice president of her class, joining the psychology society, and participating in dorm activities.

"I really think that helped me," she says. "The faster you can make those connections, the faster you can alleviate those feelings."

Staying in touch with friends and family at home can also help, she says.

People tend to keep the same levels of social integration, says Pressman. In other words, well-connected high school students often build a strong network in college.

"Obviously, there's a period where you have to build those things up," says Pressman.

Others can learn the same skills. "You've got to work on it and get yourself out there," she says. "If you've got people around you, it does seem to buffer this immune detriment."