Singapore plans to scrap a 15-year-old anti-obesity programme in schools because of complaints from parents that overweight children are being teased. It will replace it with a course promoting healthy lifestyles, The Straits Times reports. The old programme, under which overweight children have to do extra exercise until they lose weight, helped reduce the proportion of overweight students to 9.5 per cent last year, from 14 per cent in 1992.

Don't sniff just dip

Forget use-by dates and the old sniff test - University of South Carolina researchers have devised a dipstick to tell whether food is off. The test, which is said to be 90 per cent accurate, targets so-called nonvolatile amines - breakdown products you can't smell - and can be used on meat, vegetables, fruit and beverages, healthday.com reports. The test works in much the same way as litmus, or pH, paper.

Blueberries for a healthy colon

There's further evidence that blueberries and grapes are good for you, with tests on mice suggesting that an antioxidant in them helps prevent and protect against colon cancer. After eight weeks, rats given a supplement containing the berry antioxidant pterostilbene in tests at Rutgers University had 57 per cent fewer pre-cancerous lesions in their colon than those in the control group, AFP reports.

Hearty news for dark chocolate lovers

And dark chocolate scores again. A six-week trial of 45 people by the Yale Prevention Research Centre found that 227g of sugar-free cocoa a day improved the flow of blood through arteries by as much as 2.4 per cent, Reuters reports. Even those taking cocoa with sugar experienced significant improvement, although the researchers warned against binge eating.

Chinese food gets heart thumbs down

By comparison, eating Chinese food might not be such a good idea. The US Centre for Science in the Public Interest found that even vegetarian dishes at many Chinese restaurants were loaded with calories, and many contain 'artery-popping amounts of sodium', says the centre's executive director, Michael Jacobson. Worst dishes, WebMD reports, include: orange beef or crispy beef, lemon chicken, sweet and sour pork.

Wandering minds

People's minds wander on average about 30 per cent of the time, according to a University of North Carolina study of 124 undergraduates. Although some students appeared to be always focused, some daydreamed as much as 92 per cent of the time, WebMD reports. The results generally correlated to how students scored in an earlier memory test. Where does the mind go when it wanders? Most reported daydreaming and fantasising.

Jason Sankey is a tennis professional