Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day see more barbecues than any other American holiday. And peppered in-between these holidays are days full of grilling, picnicking and barbecuing.

As Memorial Day unofficially kicks off summer, University of Minnesota health sciences experts offer food safety tips to avoid traditional barbecue pitfalls that can cast a dark cloud over an otherwise sunny activity.

A new University of Minnesota School of Nursing partnership with the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage school district is looking into what school nurses can do to help curb obesity in schoolchildren.

Slated to begin in fall 2014, research led by School of Nursing associate professor Martha Kubik, Ph.D., R.N.,  received a $3 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to investigate how school nurses and other community health advocates can help address the childhood obesity epidemic.

The research “has the potential to inform public policy,” said Kubik in a Pioneer Press article on the announcement made at an early-May school board meeting. “If all goes as we hope it goes, it will expand access to obesity prevention programs for children and families.”

Second and fourth-grade students who are currently overweight and who volunteer alongside their families for the research will participate in a nine-month-long program. School nurses will lead the program charge by encouraging healthy food and activity habits through small group work with children and parents, one-on-one coaching sessions and collaboration with other groups that offer active play and healthy eating opportunities.

To read the full Pioneer Press article on the NIH grant award and its potential effects, click here. You can also check out the Burnsville-Eagan Sun Thisweek story here.

Earlier this week, a large study out of Europe made headlines for finding just one can of soda or a sugary beverage a day increased the risk of developing diabetes by more than one fifth.

According to Reuters, the study found every extra 12 fluid ounce serving of sugar-sweetened drink raised the risk of diabetes by 22 percent compared with drinking just one can a month or less.

“The study shows that there is an association between the intake of sugar beverages and a risk of developing diabetes,” Simone French, Ph.D., an obesity prevention researcher in the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health and director of the University’s Obesity Prevention Center.

According to French, there have been many studies and reviews that show a link between sugar-sweetened beverages and obesity and diabetes, including data from U.S. population-based cohort studies. Now you can add this study from Europe. She wonders whether the link this study found between sugar-sweetened beverages and diabetes risk is through the higher body weight.

“Do sugar beverages cause people to gain more weight and become overweight, and thereby this increases risk of developing diabetes?”

Studies such as the recent examination by European researchers help us inch closer to the answer. Read more about the study from Reuters here.

When most consumers hear the words salmonella outbreak, they try to avoid the potentially tainted food products like the plague.

But unfortunately, by the time the public hears about an outbreak the questions become: how long has the bacteria been spreading? What steps have been taken to stop it?

These are reasonable concerns; concerns Pew Charitable Trust addressed in its recent response to the 2011 salmonella outbreak from Cargill Meat Solutions ground turkey.

The Pew report, which was reviewed by Craig Hedberg, Ph.D., Division of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, made three general recommendations for improving salmonella outbreak detection and response.

Yesterday, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services Under Secretary Kevin Concannon said food assistance programs are not only in place to fight hunger; they need to promote healthy eating, too.

USDA Under Secretary Kevin Concannon and Senator Al Franken joined School of Public Health researchers and community members for a roundtable discussion on healthy eating and consumer services programs.

Throughout the discussion, conversation bounced across a number of topics around healthy eating but gravitated naturally towards the needs of programs for children. The bottom line: ensuring children eat enough healthy, nutritious food is imperative.

Concern around the table originated with one simple fact: in Minnesota – as seen nationwide – the summer months often leave some children without meals that would otherwise be given to them at schools.

Even though we all know consuming mass quantities of calorie-laden foods and beverages are bad for us, Americans still can’t seem to stay away from those big sugary drinks.

Last May, in an effort to combat sugar-sweeted beverages (SSBs), New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced one of the most ambitious and controversial initiatives to be seen in the war on obesity: a ban on big sugary drinks, otherwise referred to as the “soda ban.”

On the surface, banning SSBs may seem a logical direction to take in fighting obesity. If people aren’t choosing to drop the bubbly habit themselves, policy changes could simply force people to adopt healthy habits, right?  After all, it’s already been attempted with tobacco products.

When it comes to SSBs it might not be so simple.