Some practical advice about your child's weight

Charlyn Fargo, Contributor

Concerned about your child's weight? A new book from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics offers help.

First of all, know that it's a growing problem. The weight of American children has skyrocketed. On average, children today weigh about 10lb more than they did 30 years ago, and one in every three children is overweight or obese.

The book strives to help children achieve and maintain a healthy weight and to help parents address the nutritional health of their children. Healthy Eating, Healthy Weight for Kids and Teens, published by Eat Right Press, offers practical strategies for managing weight; learning to make good, appealing food choices; staying active; and building better long-term habits for a healthy life.

Healthy Eating, Healthy Weight is designed not to be read cover-to-cover but is a customisable book, allowing readers to choose chapters that are most appropriate for their families' needs. Chapters include: Eat With a Plan; Turn Off the Tube and Move; Pop the Soda Habit; Practise Portion Control; Fill Up on Fruits and Veggies; Slow Down the Fast Food; Sound the Alarm; and Come Together. The book also offers sample menus to help plan meals and snacks and more than 40 kid-tested recipes.

About green tea

Q: Is green tea really that much healthier than regular black tea? I want the health benefits, but I prefer the flavour of black tea.

A: You may get health benefits from both. More laboratory studies have investigated the compounds, especially EGCG, in green tea. However, although green and black teas contain a different balance of phytochemicals, according to USDA analysis, green tea is only slightly higher in antioxidants than black tea.

In laboratory studies, green tea and its EGCG can decrease growth of cancer cells and stimulate their self-destruction. Human studies are less clear about cancer protection. For decreasing risk of heart disease, human studies, so far, do show more benefit from green tea than from black tea.

One problem is that many of the green tea studies are conducted in Asia, where more people drink green tea frequently. So the benefits seen may somehow include the effect of lifelong green tea consumption (as opposed to the effects of starting to drink it in middle-age or later) and may also reflect other aspects of an Asian diet that researchers may not have been able to adjust for in analysing the data.

Green tea is a great beverage choice health-wise, but since the evidence is still somewhat unclear about its benefits or how much we need to drink to attain them, if you really prefer black tea, enjoy it and know that you are getting antioxidant compounds there, too.

- Information courtesy the American Institute for Cancer Research.

Charlyn Fargo is a registered dietitian at Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists. Visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

' Although green and black teas contain a different balance of phytochemicals, according to USDA analysis, green tea is only slightly higher in antioxidants than black tea.'