// posted November 26, 2006 by Lou Schuler
Here’s something that’s always fascinated me: I don’t make any secret of my politics. I’m a liberal, and I’m proud of it. And, as an old-school liberal, I cringe at stereotypes. I try hard not to be a stereotype myself. I may be bald, middle-aged, and suburban, but I try not to act like the bald, middle-aged, suburban dads I saw growing up.
What confounds me is when people embrace their stereotypes. It’s their choice, and I’d be the last guy to say people shouldn’t make their own choices. But when you go through life trying not to think of, say, all young black males as irresponsible baby daddies, or all Asians as bad drivers, or all lesbians as pushy and plump, it creates some serious cognitive dissonance to read about people who want to match their most negative images.
Today’s New York Times has a feature on one such group:
Even…
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// posted November 2, 2006 by Lou Schuler
When my son was born, almost 11 years ago, he was large. Not only did he have a huge head, but he had round little deltoids and visible muscle separations in his thighs, trapezius, and abdomen. His feet already looked like little skateboards. He was good at one thing — extracting milk from breasts — right from the get-go, and quickly grew off the charts. Because of that skill, he was chubby from his toes to his cheeks in his first months of life, and, as you could imagine, felt pretty good about things. He was the jolliest of our three children, quick to laugh and always ready for any kind of game.
He was the picture of robust health in his first year, but that didn’t stop my mother from worrying obsessively about his weight. Of course, the extra fat came off as soon as he developed a second passion…
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// posted October 29, 2006 by Lou Schuler
Now that baseball’s over, we return to our regularly scheduled blogging. This story, by the New York Times‘ Gina Kolata, talks about something I meant to blog about last week but never got around to:
This latest contribution to the obesity debate comes in an article by Sheldon H. Jacobson of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and his doctoral student, Laura McLay. Their paper, published in the current issue of The Engineering Economist, calculates how much extra gasoline is used to transport Americans now that they have grown fatter. The answer, they said, is a billion gallons a year.
Their conclusion is in the same vein as a letter published last year in The American Journal of Public Health. Its authors, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, did a sort of back-of-the-envelope calculation of how much extra fuel airlines spend hauling around fatter Americans. The answer, they wrote,…
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// posted October 12, 2006 by Lou Schuler
Scotland Bureau Chief Rannoch Donald sent this one along:
Middle-aged adults with a high body mass index (BMI) received lower scores on cognitive tests than middle-aged adults with low BMI, according to a study published in the October 10, 2006, issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
The study investigated the relationships between BMI and cognitive function in 2,223 healthy men and women in France through the use of four cognitive tests. The participants, who were between the ages of 32 and 62, were initially tested in 1996 and again five years later.
The study found a higher BMI was associated with lower cognitive test scores. Results from a test involving word memory recall show people with a BMI of 20 remembered an average of nine out of 16 words, while people with a BMI of 30 remembered an average of seven out of 16 words.
“A higher…
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// posted September 20, 2006 by Lou Schuler
Look who’s bulking up:
The image of the super-svelte Frenchwoman has taken a battering after a new survey showed more than a third are overweight.
In all, the study found that 19.8 million people out of the country’s population of 63 million were too fat, and that 5.9 million of them were obese — 2.3 million more than nine years ago.
“Women appear to be more affected than men,” said Professor Arnaud Basdevant, a Paris hospital nutritionist who jointly co-ordinated the study.
The finger of blame seems to be pointing at the same problem we have here in the you-ess-aye:
Last year the bestseller French Women Don’t Get Fat “explained” how a bit of common sense combined with a moderate intake of calorie-filled delicacies could ensure a perfect figure.
Its author, Mireille Guiliano, 60, claimed that traditional French ways of choosing and preparing food ensured good health and figure. The reality, however, is that McDonald’s…
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// posted September 5, 2006 by Lou Schuler
My wife and I are way, way, way behind the pop-culture curve in many areas, especially TV. Since we signed up with Netflix, we don’t bother following any series in real time; we wait for the full-season DVDs to come out, and then watch all the episodes in order.
To give you an idea how far behind we are, we just completed the first season of 24. For the life of me, I can’t figure out how that show got so much attention and critical acclaim, aside from the gimmick of pretending the events are happening in “real time.” I’ll acknowledge that the cliffhangers are exciting, but I couldn’t stop thinking that everything that led to each crisis was transparently phony — cops don’t act like cops, terrorists don’t act like terrorists, politicians don’t act like politicians, and no one ever gets hungry, thirsty, dirty, or sweaty. The characters were…
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// posted September 4, 2006 by Lou Schuler
It may be a holiday weekend in the U.S., but Scotland Bureau Chief Rannoch Donald is working hard this morning, sending me more obesity-related news than I normally get in a month.
Most of the news comes from the International Conference on Obesity, in Sydney, Australia, where experts kicked things off by warning of a worldwide obesity pandemic:
“This insidious, creeping pandemic of obesity is now engulfing the entire world,” Paul Zimmet, chairman of the meeting of more than 2,500 experts and health officials, said in a speech opening the weeklong International Congress on Obesity. “It’s as big a threat as global warming and bird flu.”
So you’d think that people issuing such dire warnings would have solid, practical ideas about how to stop this pandemic. And you’d be wrong:
Experts at the conference said governments should impose bans on junk food advertising aimed directly at children, although they acknowledged such restrictions were…
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// posted August 30, 2006 by Lou Schuler
The stats are in for 2005:
Mississippi, Alabama and West Virginia are the three states with the highest rates of obesity, according to a new report by the nonprofit advocacy group Trust for America’s Health. In all three states, nearly three of every 10 adults tip the scales with a body mass index of 30 or higher, a measure that accounts for both height and weight. …
The problem is especially acute in the South, home to nine of the 10 states with the highest obesity rates, Levi said.
In all, 31 states saw obesity rates rise, and just one — Nevada — saw its rates fall. Colorado, to no one’s surprise, is the least obese of all states. (Colorado Springs usually ranks among the “fittest cities” when magazines set out to measure these things.) Hawaii and Massachusetts are close behind. Kansas is right at the median.
But here‘s something interesting:
The group’s…
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// posted August 13, 2006 by Lou Schuler
Today’s New York Times Magazine has a massive story on an emerging question in the study of obesity: Do the microbes in our guts help determine if we become fat or thin?
A quick explanation of the theory:
Of the trillions and trillions of cells in a typical human body — at least 10 times as many cells in a single individual as there are stars in the Milky Way — only about 1 in 10 is human. The other 90 percent are microbial. These microbes — a term that encompasses all forms of microscopic organisms, including bacteria, fungi, protozoa and a form of life called archaea — exist everywhere. They are found in the ears, nose, mouth, vagina, anus, as well as every inch of skin, especially the armpits, the groin and between the toes. The vast majority are in the gut, which harbors 10 trillion to 100 trillion of…
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// posted August 9, 2006 by Lou Schuler
More good blog material piled up during my vacation than I could ever use, so I’m going to solve the dilemma the lazy man’s way: by providing random links.
And the check’s in the mail …
My Scotland Bureau Chief, Rannoch Donald, sent this one, showing that most overweight people believe they have healthy eating habits. Even more intriguing is that 40 percent of them report that they do “vigorous” exercise at least three times a week.
Hmmm … healthy diets, vigorous exercise, and they’re still obese? I know it’s possible, and I’m sure that in a small minority of cases it’s true. But what are the odds it’s true in that many individuals?
(Also check out this blog post by Regina Wilshire, sent by Steve Adam.)
Juice box
Good old Floyd Landis — busted, but still in full denial mode. Still, one mystery remains: Why did he only test positive after the…
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