That's Fit

According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), if you live in Austin TX or Boston MA you might want to think twice before going out to eat.

CSPI has ranked 20 US cities from best to worst using criteria from the city's food inspectors. The ranking considers "how often city inspectors found five major health hazards and five less critical concerns in 30 high-end, medium-range, and fast-food eateries in each city." Hand washing, maintaining food at a proper temperature, and improper cooking are some of the major health hazards. Minor infractions include poor employee cleanliness and hygiene, rodent and/or insect infestation, presence of sick restaurant workers, and contact of bare hands with food.

The CSPI encourages cities to adopt a restaurant grading program similar to a program in LA County where restaurants have to post what health inspection grade they received -- A, B, or C. (Lower grades would result in temporary or permanent closure).

Keep reading to see the CSPI's "Dirty Dining" list from worst to best.

Powerstrike Forza is a fitness class taught in New York City, but this is no ordinary class. The moves are all based on Samurai sword techniques and it generates quite a workout. Participants work their arms, legs, glutes, and core muscles. According to the Powerstrike web site, participants can burn around 500 calories per class.

Don't live in NYC? Or don't have the $399 to shell out for the class? (Whew! That's pricey!) Self Magazine shows us how to get the workout at home. Just grab anything that's sturdy and a few feet long (for example: an umbrella or a wiffle bat) and you've got an instant "sword." You can also use a bokken (wooden sword for martial arts training).

Self's slideshow gives you eight different moves to start with.

Are you one of the 1/3 of Americans who live in a smoggy city? Smog -- a heavy, dark fog primarily composed of ozone -- can trigger asthma symptoms, cause coughing, chest pain, wheezing, or even premature death. The top 10 smoggiest cities are:

• Los Angeles, CA. The air quality is slowing improving in LA, but, on average, it still has 90 days per year with unhealthy ozone levels.
• Bakersfield, CA. Bakersfield has an average of 83 days with unhealthy ozone levels each year, as well as other air quality issues.
• Visalia, CA. Lying near Sequoia National Forest, Visalia has an average of 68 high ozone days per year.
• Houston, TX. Nearly 400,000 Houston residents have asthma -- a condition that can be exacerbated by the city's average of 36 unhealthy ozone days per year.
• Fresno, CA. In 2000, Fresno had 87 unhealthy ozone days. Now, the city is averaging only 34 unhealthy ozone days per year -- still high enough to land it in the top 10, but amazing progress.
• Sacramento, CA. The fifth city from California's Central Valley to make the list, Sacramento has an average of 25 unhealthy ozone days per year.
• Dallas, TX. Dallas has an average of 22 unhealthy ozone days per year.
• New York, NY. With such a constant flow of traffic, it's almost surprising that New York doesn't have more than an average of 12 unhealthy ozone days per year.
• Washington DC/Baltimore. Our capitol region has an average of 11 unhealthy ozone days per year.
• Baton Rouge, LA. Baton Rouge averages 11 unhealthy ozone days per year.
  

Using statistics from such organizations as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Zagat Survey, the magazine Cooking Light ranked the most healthy major metropolitan areas in the U.S.

Some of the cities to appear on the list may be expected, while others may be a bit surprising. Either way, if living healthy is your goal, a good start may be taking up residence in any one of these health-conscious locales.

After reading through the list, you can then check out an explanation for why these cities made the list by clicking here.

1. Seattle

2. Portland, OR

3. Washington D.C.

4. Minneapolis

5. San Francisco

6. Boston

7. Denver

8. Milwaukee

9. Philadelphia

Highlighting just how hard of a habit smoking is to quit, New York state is running a new ad campaign that features a lifelong smoker. Skip Legault, 48, shares his smoking-related health problems -- including two heart attacks before age 30 -- in ads that will reach viewers through TV, Internet, and newspapers.

The fact that Mr. Legault is still smoking has brought the ads some criticism, but state health officials say that his smoking status shouldn't matter. The whole point is to show people the damage that smoking can do, and how hard it is to stop once you've started.

You can view the ad here. What do you think about it?

I think that, in most cases, it's almost always healthier to eat in than eat out. You have control over what goes into your meal and can control your portion sizes. New York recently required that restaurants share nutritional information with their customers, and a similar bill in California was recently ignored by their governor. Why is nutritional information such a big deal? Because in some cases, what you're eating is really, really bad in terms of calories, fat, and sodium.

Men's Health recently went behind the scenes to find out why nutritional information is such a well-kept secret. In some cases, what they discovered was stunning. For instance, did you know that an order of Aussie Cheese Fries at Outback Steak House has a whopping 2,900 calories?

It makes for interesting reading. I don't think there's anything wrong with eating out now and then, or even indulging in some cheesy fries, but I do think that savvy consumers should be concerned when a restaurant won't open up about what's in their food. If you have to hide it, it makes me wonder why. What do you think?

Thanks in large part to their high chocolate and cola consumption (in addition to drinking quite a bit a coffee), Chicago was ranked the most caffeinated city in the U.S. according to a poll conducted by Prince Market Research.

Other cities to appear on the list include:

5- Tampa

4 - Miami

3 - Phoenix

2 - Atlanta

The least caffeineted cities were:

5 - San Francisco

4 - Philadelphia

3 - New York

2 - Detroit

1 - Baltimore

The study looked at consumption of tea, coffee, energy drinks, chocolate, soda, and caffeine pills in 20 major cities in the U.S. by interviewing 2,000 people.

If you're a guy who's sporting a good size beer belly these days, you may want to consider some measures to trim down. That's because larger waistlines are characteristic of metabolic syndrome; an aggregation of unhealthy physical traits that increases one's risk of heart disease and diabetes.

As if a risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease weren't reason enough to slim down, research from Cornell Medical College in New York revealed that waist size is also a fairly accurate predictor of potential prostate problems. In the study, 88 men (Note: the average age of study participants was 62 years old) who experienced moderate-to-severe untreated unrinary issues symptomatic of enlarged prostates were grouped according to waist circumference.

The researchers discovered that prostate volume, prostate specific antigen level, voiding symptoms, erectile dysfunction, and ejaculatory dysfunction were at increased levels in men with larger waistlines.

I'm not so sure that I would call it a vacation, per se, but I did recently take a ten day road trip with my husband and new baby to see both our families. We rented a car and went from Brooklyn, New York to Cleveland, Ohio, down to Louisville, Kentucky (my home town), back up to Delphi, Indiana, on to somewhere in Pennsylvania and then back to New York City.

The entire event was mind-boggling. Trying to juggle dealing with an infant, spotty directions, managing an SUV (and gas) and seeing all our friends and family really put a damper on our efforts to exercise.

That said, I did get a few runs in, all of them in Louisville. There is a one mile track all the way around my parents' neighborhood that I ran around over and over and over. It was so repetitive that at one point I forget where I was and thought I'd gone a lot farther than I had; turned out I had just decided to go the other way for a bit of variety. Sheesh.

I knew going into it that it would be difficult to find time--and places--to run on this trip. Since we were spending so much time in a car, which we're not used to doing, we got less time in walking as well. We sat and sat and sat and sat some more. We tried not to eat too poorly but there were times when we had to eat something and the only thing around was fast food joints.

All the drama from New York City's recent regulation requiring fast food restaurants to post calorie counts on menus is about to come to a head as the deadline, this Sunday, approaches. Burger King, McDonalds, and Wendy's are all openly planning to defy the order and will not be making any changes to their menus anytime soon. And due to a pending lawsuit by the New York Restaurant Association the city won't be handing out any fines until at least October, if the new law is still standing by then.

In the meantime fast food chains say it's not that they don't want consumers to know calorie counts (many of them make the information available voluntarily anyway), but they say that putting them on the menu in print as big as the price would make for a messy, hard to read display that would look like "a bad day at the eye doctor's office."

What do you think? I like the idea of easily accessible calorie information, but I don't know that it needs to be in huge print right on the menu board.

The Taste of Buffalo is one of the nation's largest food festivals and attracts more than 450,000 people each year, and this year some of the fare will be just a little healthier. Scheduled for July 7th and 8th, the 24th annual Taste of Buffalo has made some healthy changes by requiring all food vendors to have at least one item on the menu that meets pre-set guidelines for fat, salt, and cholesterol.

The idea is not to completely change the flavors of the festival or force people to make healthy choices, but instead to give people the option of trying healthier fare and to show that foods with less salt and fat can still taste good. Some vendors have already been offering low-fat and low-salt options in years past and have had good success, so this year should be no different.

17-year-old Arielle Newman died in April from what is now being described as an over-dose of anti-inflammatory muscle cream. As a cross country track runner for Notre Dame Academy on Staten Island, NY, her body absorbed high levels of the active ingredient commonly found in anti-inflammatory sports products such as Bengay and Icy Hot: methyl salicylate. Ms. Newman was reportedly using the cream frequently along with up to two other products containing the ingredient.

Methyl salicylate poisoning is extremely rare and doctors aren't sure if it was due to overuse or simply that her body absorbed an abnormal amount of the chemical. The makers of Bengay, Johnson & Johnson, have expressed their condolences to the family and are reminding consumers about "the importance of reading the label on this and all over-the-counter medicines to ensure safe and proper use."

If you live in certain parts of New York City you may find yourself struggling even more than most to eat healthy. A recent survey shows that Harlem, for example, lags behind "swankier" neighborhoods when it comes to healthy shopping options for its residents. Fast food restaurants largely outnumber grocery stores selling fresh produce and low-fat dairy products, and 1 in 6 of the restaurants are fast food. The affect on the health of the population seems clear, as the Harlem population is up to 4x more likely to be obese or have diabetes than people living in more upscale areas with healthier shopping.

Harlem isn't the only neighborhood dealing with these challenges, and the survey did result in some recommendations that will hopefully make a difference. It makes me think of my own neighborhood, and I wonder if I'm fighting against convenience to eat better. How does your area stack up?

I live in a fairly small city where interesting and unique gym classes are hard to find, so I always get a kick out of reading what they're doing other places. In New York the 'Bounce-n-Slide' class sounds particularly fun because it appeals to a person's inner child: you get to jump on a trampoline, slide on a giant mat that mimics ice, and then do some ab and mat work to finish things up (okay, not so much 'inner child' on that last one).

These classes were designed to take some of the boredom and tedious repetition out of what most people think of when they imagine taking a class at the gym, and although the 'Bounce-n-Slide' is my favorite of the bunch, the article also covers a Pilates class that incorporates cardio work and a parent-child class designed for parents to bring their kids with them.

Honestly they all sound awesome! Makes me wish I lived in New York.

So maybe the thought of joining a regular old spinning or Pilates class at the gym just doesn't trip your trigger. Maybe you're looking for something more interesting and different than that? Well then maybe, if you're lucky, one of these unique classes are located near you:

• In the Los Angeles area at the Crunch gym try the Rocket Workout. You'll get to use a new machine that is rapidly catching on in gyms all over called the Orbital 360, and the workout includes everything from strength training to stretching to Pilates.
• In Boston at Healthworks try the class called Burn. You'll alternate between walking and running on and off a treadmill for up to 50 minutes. Feel the burn!
  
• The Miami David Barton Gym has a class called Barton Biking where you'll alternate between biking and arm strengthening moves to burn over 500 calories in an hour.
• Chicago's Equinox is home to Chaos, where you'll get to do intervals of strength training and cardio, but with an element of make-believe mixed in.
• And finally, at the New York Health and Racquet Club in New York City you can opt for the Bin Zhou class where you'll meditate and do tai chi, qi gong, and isometrics.