Your health: Take the 'Daily Challenge'

Once-a-day advice

Do these thoughts run through your mind: “I already ate an unhealthy lunch; I might as well eat junk for dinner, too.” “A 20-minute jog won't make any difference. I'll stay home.”

For people who tend to have an all-or-nothing attitude toward health, signing up for an email called the “Daily Challenge” at meyouhealth.com might be just the ticket, according to The Washington Post.

Each day at 7 a.m., subscribers to the free service will receive an email with a small daily action to accomplish within 24 hours, such as doing a set of lunges, eating a red vegetable or calling a friend.

It's a “small, achievable step toward healthy living each day,” according to MeYou Health, a Boston company that creates mobile and Web products that promote wellness.

Healthy fast food?

Calorie labeling on menus, a requirement for many restaurants under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, can help people manage their weight only if those listings are correct.

Research published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that restaurants are providing accurate information — most of the time.

The study, led by researchers at Tufts University, compared the stated calorie content of 269 items from 42 fast-food and sit-down restaurants with laboratory-measured counts for those foods.

The Washington Post reports 40 percent of the dishes had calorie listings that were at least 10 calories per portion lower than their actual calorie content. Fifty-two percent had calorie listings that were at least 10 calories per portion higher than their actual calorie count. Nineteen percent of the dishes contained more than 100 calories per portion more than represented by the restaurants.

Items such as salads, whose low calorie listings might make them attractive to health-conscious diners, often had many more calories than the menu indicated.

All in all, fast-food restaurants did a better job of providing accurate calorie information than sit-down restaurants. This may be because fast-food eateries serve more pre-portioned foods than sit-down restaurants, which size their portions themselves, leading to greater variation.