BEST DIET : LOSE WEIGHT WITH BEST TRICK

There’s nothing like a furry red creature with a big nose to add a dash of excitement to the churn of bureaucracy. Elmo bounded into the White House kitchen earlier this week and talked turkey with hunky assistant presidential chef Sam Kass (Elmo calls him “Mr. Sam”) to mark the passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which aims to boost the nutrition and taste quotient found in school lunchrooms.

Elmo: Elmo’s a little worried. Elmo’s mommy told him he’s going to go to school and eat lunch in school.

Kass: So why are you worried? That’s great!

Elmo: Because what if there isn’t any good food at school?

Kass: Oh, Elmo, there’s going to be great food in school. And because of this new law that’s passed, we’re going to make sure that all food in school is healthy, nutritious and delicious.

Elmo: Really? (Here, the monster sounds incredulous. It is, in fact, quite a pledge. School lunches are not renowned for their healthiness, nutritiousness or deliciousness. Earlier this year, my kindergartener and second-grader begged to buy lunch at school. Tacos were on the menu, and they love tacos. Well, turns out they didn’t love school-lunch tacos; actually, they hated them. Their flirtation with school-lunch buying ended as quickly as it began. Fortunately, they have a choice. But many millions of kids who qualify for free or reduced school meals don’t.) (More on Time.com: More Muppets? The New ‘Superfoods’ Want Kids to Eat Healthy)

President Obama, who signed the legislation this week at a Washington, D.C., school, explained his support in terms of making sure “our kids have the energy and the capacity to go toe to toe with any of their peers, anywhere in the world. And we need to make sure that they’re all reaching their potential.”

What’s all this talk about capacity and potential got to do with the Sloppy Joes served up by the school cafeteria? More than 31 million U.S. children participate in school lunch programs. With the economy reeling, some of these kids get their only meals at school. Consider that one of every three kids in America qualifies as overweight or obese, and it’s not hard to see why breakfast and lunch eaten at school can make a big difference when it comes to many schoolchildren’s diet.

Both Democrats and Republicans hope the child nutrition bill will result in healthier food selection in school cafeterias and help teach kids about proper nutrition. It also aims to give the government the authority to set nutritional standards for all foods regularly sold in schools during the school day, including vending machines, and offers additional funding to schools that offer more nutritious meals. (More on Time.com: Study: 40% of Kids’ Calories Come From Solid Fat and Sugar)

First Lady Michele Obama, who has mounted a public campaign against childhood obesity, commented that “we can all agree that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, all children should have the basic nutrition they need to learn and grow and to pursue their dreams, because in the end, nothing is more important than the health and well-being of our children.  Nothing.”

But back to Elmo. The preschooler is incredulous when he hears that Kass intends to show him some examples of the kind of food he can expect to find in the school lunchroom. (More on Time.com: Mom and Consumer Group Sue McDonald’s For Luring Kids with Happy Meal Toys)

Elmo: Mr. Sam has the same kind of food that they have at school here at the White House?

Kass: I do.

Elmo: Well, that’s very convenient. (Elmo does a great job of saying this tongue-in-cheek.)

Kass whips out a few plates of appetizingly prepared and perfectly balanced meals — whole-wheat lasagna and salad, rice-and-bean burritos, garnished with apples and carrots.

If it’s good enough for the White House, apparently, it’s good enough for our public schools. Or is it the other way around?

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Exercising willpower is certainly an important technique for losing weight. But according to James Hill, executive director of the Anschutz Health and Wellness Center at the University of Colorado, you can’t rely on it as an inexhaustible resource.

“You only have a certain amount of it, and it’s gone,” Hill tells CNN Health.

The trick is to recognize that willpower is finite, and plan ahead of time how to get through “fattening” moments. If you know you’ll be tempted by all the free treats at a party, for instance, don’t arrive famished — eat a protein bar beforehand to keep yourself from eating too much once you arrive. If you’re worried that you’ll return from a trip to Italy carrying extra weight in cannolis, enlist help from your friends. You don’t have to skip dessert entirely — just make sure you share with your companions.

For the full article on ways to outwit your “fat moments,” head over to CNN Health.

More on TIME.com:

Want to Lose Weight While You Do Nothing? Try Exercising First

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Calorie Counts on Menus: Apparently, Nobody Cares

Americans quaff nearly 10 billion gallons of bottled water each year, in large part because they assume, wrongly, that it’s healthier and safer than tap water. Somewhat surprisingly, the data has suggested, underserved black and Latino families tend to spend more money than whites do on bottled water, and provide it exclusively for their kids.

While previous research has shown that minorities use bottled water more often than whites, the question has always been, why? A new study in the Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine aimed to find out, by surveying 632 parents, 32% of whom were Latino, 33% African American, and 35% white.

(More on TIME.com: The USDA Ditches the Food Pyramid for a Plate)

The study’s authors, from the department of pediatrics at the Medical College of Wisconsin, report that African American and Latino parents were three times more likely to give their children bottled water exclusively, compared with white parents. When questioned about their habits, minority parents reported that that they thought bottled water was cleaner, safer, healthier, more convenient and better tasting than tap.

In fact, the study author’s note, bottled water may be prone to bacterial contamination. A National Resources Defense Council investigation found that 17% of bottled waters had bacterial loads that were considered unsafe; 22% were tainted with enough chemicals, including arsenic, that they wouldn’t pass the strictest state standards.

What’s more, data have associated bottled water with diarrheal illness in kids: a 2010 study found that 45% of children who sought treatment for severe diarrhea drank only bottled water. And kids who use bottled water exclusively in place of tap may not get enough exposure to fluoride, which can affect their oral health. (It’s worth noting, too, that about one-quarter of all bottled waters are actually just tap water, repackaged — regardless of the pure mountain spring on the label.)

Overall, bottled water use was high, the current survey found, with 45% of parents saying their kids drank primarily or exclusively from bottled sources (broken down by ethnicity, more than 20% of Latino and black parents used only bottled water, compared with 10% of white parents). Factors like household income or previous residence outside the U.S. — where in many places bottled water may actually be healthier and cleaner than municipal sources — weren’t associated with bottled water consumption.

(More on TIME.com: Teens Don’t Need Sports and Energy Drinks, Pediatricians Say)

Indeed researchers found that families with lower incomes were more likely to buy bottled water: white families reported spending an average 0.4% (or about $12 a month) of their household income on bottled water, while African American and Latino families spent an average 1% (or $20 a month) of their incomes. Further, 12% of African American respondents and 14% of Latino respondents reported having to sacrifice other goods in order to afford their bottled water habit.

“The disproportionate use of bottled water by poor and minority families may contribute to health disparities,” write the authors. “Despite these perceptions about the safety and health effect of bottled water, there is little if any objective evidence that in most circumstances there is any actual health benefit of bottled water over tap water in the United States.”

(More on TIME.com: Cafeteria Cams Track Students’ Calorie Consumption at School)

Given the high cost and health consequences of consuming exclusively bottled water, the researchers hope their efforts will lead to public education campaigns about water from the tap: it’s free, it’s healthy and it usually even tastes good.

As summer comes to a close, so does BBQ season. That’s a good thing for your health, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, which finds that consumption of red and processed meat — including summer cook-out favorites like hot dogs, hamburgers and pork ribs — is associated with an increased risk of Type 2 diabetes.

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health analyzed data on 200,000 men and women who participated in the long-term Health Professionals Follow-Up Study and the Nurses’ Health Studies. They also conducted a larger analysis, which included data from other previously published studies, looking at a total of 442,101 participants, 28,228 of whom developed Type 2 diabetes during the study period.

After adjusting for contributing risk factors like age, weight, exercise habits, smoking, genetic predispositions and other dietary factors, the researchers found a strong association between eating red meat, particularly processed meat, and risk of Type 2 diabetes.

MORE: How to Make a Healthy Diet More Affordable

Among their findings:

• Each 2-oz. serving of processed meat, including hot dogs, bacon, salami and other cold cuts, per day accounted for a 51% increase in diabetes risk

• A 3.5-oz. serving of unprocessed red meat, such as hamburger, steak, pork or lamb, per day was linked to a 19% increase in risk of diabetes

• Replacing one serving per day of red and processed meats with healthier options, such as nuts, whole grains and low-fat dairy, accounted for a 16% to 35% reduction in diabetes risk

The researchers weren’t sure exactly why red meat may contribute to diabetes risk, but senior author Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), hypothesized that the high amount of heme iron in red meat could be responsible; iron helps prevent anemia, but the Western diet contains an iron overload, and high levels of iron in the body have been associated with Type 2 diabetes.

NEXT: “Red meat is not benign”

Feeding babies cereal, bread and crackers, which are high in sodium, may trigger a yearning for salt that lasts a lifetime, according to a new study that examined when and why people start hankering for the taste of salt.

The research is important because health authorities around the globe have been calling for people to reduce their sodium intake, which has increased over the last 50 years. But despite the public-health pronouncements, persuading people to shun salt hasn’t been successful. “We are built to like salt,” says Leslie Stein, a senior research associate at Monell Chemical Sciences Center, a nonprofit research institute in Philadelphia that studies the mechanisms and functions of taste and smell.

In fact, humans need salt to survive — just not as much as we’re eating. The average American consumes 3,436 mg of sodium a day, more than double the government’s recommended daily maximum. Sodium helps maintain blood pressure, send nerve messages and plays a role in muscle contraction. But too much has been linked to high blood pressure, a risk factor for heart disease and stroke.

Most of the salt we consume is in processed foods — bread has lots of salt, as do cereal and cakes, cheese and meat, and, of course, snack foods. Researchers know people like salt, but they don’t know why. Scientists understand the mechanism of sweet and bitter taste receptors, but they don’t have a good grasp of how salt taste receptors work. And while babies come out of the womb with a built-in preference for sweet and a strong aversion to bitter, it appears that they are indifferent to salty for the first few months of life.

MORE: Cutting Back on Salt: How Low Is Too Low?

To try to puzzle it out, Monell researchers studied 61 infants from the Philadelphia area at 2 months, then again at 6 months of age. At both points, they gave the babies three bottles, each containing water; a 1% salt solution, which mimics the saltiness of chicken noodle soup; or a 2% salt solution, which is the equivalent of doubling that bowl of chicken noodle soup’s saltiness.

The babies were given two minutes to drink out of each bottle. To assess each infant’s affinity for salt, researchers compared how much salt solution they drank compared to plain water. If they drank more of the salty bottles, they were categorized as preferring the salt solution; if they drank less, they were classified as rejecting it. Babies who drank the same amount of water or salty liquid were described as indifferent.

At 2 months of age, researchers found that babies were indifferent to the 1% solution and flat-out rejected the 2% mixture. But by 6 months, some appeared to have developed a taste for salt. Babies who had already begun eating starchy, sodium-packed morsels like Cheerios and bread in the interim showed a preference for both salty solutions, while babies who had stuck to baby food and low-salt foods like fruits and vegetables did not, according to the research, which was published this week in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. “Dietary experience can influence babies’ preference for salty taste,” says Stein, the study’s lead author.

The results don’t prove that early introduction of starchy table foods causes a later preference for salt; they show only an association between the two. But, if they hold up, the findings suggest that parents may have an easy way to reduce kids’ risk of becoming salt fiends later on.

MORE: To Salt or Not to Salt? Study Questions the Benefits of Reducing Dietary Sodium

To back up their findings in the infants, Stein circled back with 26 babies once they became preschoolers. Within that group, 12 had been introduced to starchy table foods before they were 6 months old, and 14 had not.

Mothers were asked about “salt-directed behaviors”: did their kids put salt on unusual foods like oranges? Were they likely to lick salt off foods such as pretzels before eating them? Moms with children who’d started on starchy foods before they were 6 months old were more likely than the other group to report that their kids liked to consume plain salt by licking it off, for example.

The small study is far from the last word on children’s sodium intake. But it does offer some food for thought: perhaps the public-health campaign to reduce salt intake may need to start in childhood and even infancy. “It might be a guide for parents about how to introduce their children to healthy foods,” says Stein.

Bonnie Rochman is a reporter at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @brochman. You can also continue the discussion on TIME‘s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.