What constitutes a healthy diet? Media and advertisers would like us to think that the answer is complicated and controversial, but science tell us otherwise. Rather than present an ideology, A Conversation About Healthy Eating avoids the typical media noise, to presenting instead the science. This book allows for a comprehensive understanding and provides clear recommendations for how you can adapt both your environment and your lifestyle to make healthy eating possible.

This book is a focus on the USDA and other public health agencies that have a long history of disseminating information about why and how to make food choices that promote health and prevent disease. Since 1980, recommendations on attaining adequate nutrition also include information about the benefits of maintaining a healthy body weight and limiting consumption of nutrients linked to chronic diseases. On the other side of the table, food manufacturers and marketers have discovered that certain psychological cues, such as packaging and presentation, are efficient ways to increase consumption of their products. These approaches have not been widely used in public health efforts aimed at improving diet quality and reducing body weight. The sharp increase in overweight and obesity among Americans has occurred concurrently with increased awareness and publicity regarding the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. Examining this phenomenon provides an opportunity to incorporate elements of behavioural economics into consumer food choice analysis. This book consists of public documents which have been located, gathered, combined, reformatted, and enhanced with a subject index, selectively edited and bound to provide easy access.

Exercise for women is a heavily-laden social and embodied experience. While exercise promotion has become an increasingly visible part of health campaigns, obesity among women is rising, and studies indicate that women are generally less physically active than men. Women's (lack of) exercise, therefore, has become a public concern, and physiological and psychological research has attempted to develop more effective exercise programs aimed at women. Yet women have a complex relationship with embodiment and physical activity that is difficult for quantitative scientific approaches to explore. This book addresses this neglect by providing a much-needed feminist, qualitative social analysis of women and exercise. The contributors, drawn from across Europe and North America, investigate the ways women experience exercise within the context of the global fitness industry. All the authors take a specifically feminist perspective in their analysis of the fit, feminine body, exploring media images and the global branding of fitness products, the relationship between exercise and fat, the construction of physical activity within health discourse, and the lived experience of the exercising body. The collection explores the diversity of women's experiences of exercise in relation to age, ethnicity and body size. The book is essential for anyone interested in health promotion, sport and exercise or the social and cultural study of gender and embodiment.

As anyone who takes up a new sport quickly discovers, even basic athletic moves require high levels of coordination and control. Whether dribbling a basketball or hitting a backhand, limbs must be synchronized and bodies balanced, all with precise timing. But no matter how diligently we watch the pros or practice ourselves, the body's inner workings remain invisible. The Hidden Mechanics of Exercise reveals the microworld of the human body in motion, from the motor proteins that produce force, to the signaling molecules that activate muscles, to the enzymes that extract energy from nutrients. Christopher Gillen describes how biomolecules such as myosin, collagen, hemoglobin, and creatine kinase power our athletic movements. During exercise, these molecules dynamically morph into different shapes, causing muscles, tendons, blood, and other tissues to perform their vital functions. Gillen explores a wide array of topics, from how genetic testing may soon help athletes train more effectively, to how physiological differences between women and men influence nutrition. The Hidden Mechanics of Exercise tackles questions athletes routinely ask. What should we ingest before and during a race? How does a hard workout trigger changes in our muscles? Why does exercise make us feel good? Athletes need not become biologists to race in a triathlon or carve turns on a snowboard. But Gillen, who has run ten ultramarathons, points out that athletes wishing to improve their performance will profit from a deeper understanding of the body's molecular mechanisms.