Millions of schoolchildren in the United States will see more fruit and vegetables and less fat on their lunch plates under new U.S. Department of Agriculture standards unveiled Wednesday aimed at improving child nutrition and reducing childhood obesity.

“Improving the quality of the school meals is a critical step in building a healthy future for our kids,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “When it comes to our children, we must do everything possible to provide them the nutrition they need to be healthy, active and ready to face the future – today we take an important step towards that goal.”

WASHINGTON — U.S. healthcare spending barely rose in 2010 from record-low recession levels, as high unemployment and the loss of private health insurance forced many Americans to delay or forego medical treatment, government officials said on Monday.

Spending edged up 3.9 percent, bringing the total size of the U.S.
healthcare system to $2.6 trillion, or $8,402 per person, according to a
report released by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services,
or CMS, and published in the journal Health Affairs.

Growth in 2010 was only a slim 0.1 percentage point higher than the
3.8 percent recorded in 2009, which was the lowest rate recorded in half
a century. Per capita health spending in the United States is still the
highest worldwide.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Irene, the British Medical Journal offers some cheery news.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of studies on chocolate and health concludes that the flavonol antioxidants in chocolate reduce the risk for cardiometabolic disorders such as heart disease and stroke–by a whopping one-third.

As the investigators explain, previous research suggests that:

chocolate consumption has a positive influence on human health, with antioxidant, antihypertensive, anti-inflammatory, anti-atherogenic, and anti-thrombotic effects as well as influence on insulin sensitivity, vascular endothelial function, and activation of nitric oxide.

This seems like a lot for one food–let alone candy–to accomplish, but their review of seven studies concludes that people who eat the most chocolate compared to those who eat the least have much lower disease risks.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal health officials said Wednesday more illnesses and possibly more deaths may be linked to an outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe in coming weeks.

So far, the outbreak has caused at least 72 illnesses — including up to 16 deaths — in 18 states, making it the deadliest food outbreak in the United States in more than a decade.

The heads of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration said consumers who have cantaloupes produced by Jensen Farms in Colorado should throw them out. If they are not sure where the fruit is from, they shouldn’t eat it.

Washington (CNN) — The U.S. Postal Service does not have the money to meet an obligation to a retiree health care trust fund coming due at the end of the month, but if there’s a default, officials promise no interruption in the mail, the payroll or payments to suppliers.

Commenting in response to a New York Times article Monday suggesting that the Postal Service may have to shut down within months, spokeswoman Yvonne Yoerger said there’s “nothing actually new in the Postal Service’s position.”

“We are required to make this $5.5 billion payment into the future retiree health benefits fund and probably won’t be able to make it when it comes due September 30th.”

(CNN) — When Alden Waters gets migraines, she feels as if her head is being squeezed into a vise. Depending on what she has eaten, she may vomit. The headache takes longer to go away if she can’t rest and goes to teach her math classes anyway.

“It’s rare, but it does happen that I won’t be able to come to school,” said Waters, 26, a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Los Angeles.

For nearly four years, a bacterial infection that left a Seattle-area newborn with severe brain damage while his twin brother developed normally has remained a medical mystery, traumatizing his family and stumping local and national disease experts.

Myles Massey, now 3, can’t speak or walk, must be fed through a stomach tube, has little use of the left side of his body and suffers from cerebral palsy and mental delays, all attributed to a rare Bacillus cereus infection that developed after his birth on Sept. 1, 2007.

In the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster in March, the appetite for new nuclear power plants slipped to post-Chernobyl lows. Regulators from Italy to Switzerland to Texas moved to stop pending nuclear-power projects, and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) began to re-evaluate the safety of all domestic plants. Yet nuclear power still provides 20 percent of America’s total electric power and 70 percent of its emissions-free energy, in large part because no alternative energy source can match its efficiency.

Today’s ruling by a federal appeals court in Ohio, upholding the Obama health care law, marks the first time a Republican-appointed judge has found the most controversial part of the law constitutional.

The ruling by a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals was 2-1 on the “individual mandate” -.msn- the requirement that all Americans get health insurance. One of the judges voting to uphold it was Jeffrey Sutton, an appointee of George W. Bush and a former law clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia.

Mitsuyuki Ikeda, a researcher from the Okayama Laboratory, has developed steaks based on proteins from human excrement. Tokyo Sewage approached the scientist because of an overabundance of sewage mud. They asked him to explore the possible uses of the sewage and Ikeda found that the mud contained a great deal of protein because of all the bacteria.

The researchers then extracted those proteins, combined them with a reaction enhancer and put it in an exploder which created the artificial steak. The “meat” is 63% proteins, 25% carbohydrates, 3% lipids and 9% minerals. The researchers color the poop meat red with food coloring and enhance the flavor with soy protein. Initial tests have people saying it even tastes like beef.