In the days of GM grain, corporate agriculture and governmental farm subsidy programs, it's less expensive and much easier to eat crap food.

That is, until you factor in the consequences of eating this way.

And nobody walks in LA. Or anywhere else, it appears.

Per LJ, read The Omnivore's Dilemma

I did inhale.

Older people tend to put on more weight, so as our population ages there's going to be more fatbodies. Child obesity percentages might be a better index...

Don's right, too, in that the way our cities are planned that there isn't as much opportunity for necessary physical activity. We have to take a car to go to the post office or the grocery store, where in Europe there is more integration (thus allowing one to bike or walk wherever). If I had to guess, the zoning and spreading out of our cities has only intensified since 1985.

And poor people have to eat unhealthy, so as we get more poor people...

and increased used of growth regulators (hormones) residue in food that is still active when a human eats it? Does growth hormones stay active after the plant or animal eats it?

"There are two types of folk music:
quiet folk music and loud folk music.
I play both."

Dave Alvin

Word to the wise...

"The BMI is meant to broadly categorize populations for purely statistical purposes. As noted, its accuracy in relation to actual levels of body fat is easily distorted by such factors as fitness level, muscle mass, bone structure, gender, and ethnicity. People who are mesomorphic tend to have higher BMI numbers than people who are endomorphic, because they have greater bone mass and greater muscle mass than do endomorphic individuals.

Similarly, ectomorphic individuals could conceivably receive a reading below the normal range, when in fact their body type makes it healthy for them to be thin. In fact, ectomorphs could obtain healthy readings even when their body fat percentage is higher than is healthy, as their low lean mass will lower the BMI.

People with short stature tend to have lower BMI. Therefore they should use a lower cut-off value for obesity diagnosis.The same applies to older people, whose reduced muscle mass can hide additional body fat without increasing BMI."

Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Harkin combats childhood obesity with bill to promote physical education in schools

Obesity rates have doubled in kids 2-5 years and 12-19 years; rates have tripled in kids 6-11 years

WASHINGTON, D.C.– Continuing his efforts to lower the rising rates of childhood obesity, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) today introduced legislation encouraging schools to provide kids with quality physical education that can help them lead healthier lives. The Fitness Integrated with Teaching Kids Act (FIT Kids Act) would amend the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) to support physical education for all public school children through grade 12 and ensure they receive important health and nutritional information. Harkin is a senior member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee which is tasked with overseeing NCLB.

Since the 1970s, the percentage rate of obesity has more than doubled for preschool children aged 2-5 years and adolescents aged 12-19 years, and has more than tripled for children aged 6-11 years. Researchers have found that physical inactivity is a contributing factor to the development of childhood obesity.

“As Congress prepares to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act, our goal is to support a challenging and diverse education system for all kids that includes rigorous physical education. We must take action to combat rising rates of childhood obesity and diabetes, a public health crisis that we cannot ignore,” Harkin said. “As every parent knows, engaging children in physical activity throughout the day improves fitness, burns off excess energy and boosts concentration in the classroom. I hope this bill will empower our schools and parents to help improve our kids’ health.”

"Quality physical education will not only give our kids the tools to lead healthy lives, but it will motivate them to learn and boost academic performance, said Daniel W. Jones, M.D., American Heart Association President. "That's why we're pleased Senator Harkin has introduced FIT Kids Act to amend No Child Left Behind in efforts to improve physical education in our schools. With an increasing number of children at risk for cardiovascular diseases as a result of our nation's childhood obesity epidemic, we must teach them the ABC’s of health, physical activity and good nutrition."

Many governmental, scientific, and public health agencies recommend that school-age children and adolescents engage in at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity every day of the week, or 420 minutes per week. The national standard for physical education frequency is 150 minutes per week in elementary school and 225 minutes per week in middle and high school.

Despite these recommendations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2000 that fewer than ten percent of elementary, junior high and high schools offer daily PE or its equivalent for the entire school year for all students. In addition, a 2002 survey reported that more than 60 percent of children do not participate in any organized physical activity outside of school hours.

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It takes about 11 calories per day to maintain an extra pound of weight. So, someone who is 30 pounds overweight is eating about 330 extra calories per day. That's roughly the difference between a small and large order of fries at McDonalds, three ounces of peanut butter or cheese, two tablespoons of sugar, or a bit more than a tablespoon of oil.

For a 2000 calorie per day diet, that's a relative 15% increase. I'm willing to bet that restaurant serving sizes have increased by more than that in th e last 30 years.

Now doctors say it's good to be fat

After years of anti-obesity public health advice, a major new study causes an outcry by concluding that the overweight live longer

By David Usborne in New York
Published: 08 November 2007

A startling new study by medical researchers in the United States has caused consternation among public health professionals by suggesting that, contrary to conventional wisdom, being overweight might actually be beneficial for health.

The study, published yesterday in the respected Journal of the American Medical Association, runs counter to almost all other advice to consumers by saying that carrying a little extra flab – though not too much – might help people to live longer.

Struggling dieters, used to being told that staying thin is the best prescription for longevity, are likely to be confused this morning if not heartily relieved. While being a bit overweight may indeed increase your chances of dying from diabetes and kidney disease – conditions that are often linked with one another – the same is not true for a host of other ailments including cancer and heart disease, the report suggests.

In fact, scanning the whole gamut of diseases that could curtail your life, being over weight is, on balance, a good thing. The bottom line, the scientists say, is that modestly overweight people demonstrate a lower death rate than their peers who are underweight, obese or – most surprisingly – normal weight.

The findings will be hard to dismiss. They are the result of analysis of decades of data by federal researchers at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. This is not a study from a fringe group of scientists or sponsored by a fast-food chain.

Being overweight, the report asserts in its conclusions, "was associated with significantly decreased all-cause mortality overall".

"The take-home message is that the relationship between fat and mortality is more complicated than we tend to think," said Katherine Flegal, the lead researcher. "It's not a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all situation where excess weight just increases your mortality risk for any and all causes of death."

That the CDC has even published the report and thus threatened to muffle years of propaganda as to the health benefits of staying slender has enraged some medical experts.

"It's just rubbish," fumed Walter Willett, the professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. "It's just ludicrous to say there is no increased risk of mortality from being overweight."

Not that the CDC results are an invitation to throw caution to the winds and take cream with everything. The scientists are careful to stress that the benefits they are describing are limited to those people who are merely overweight – which generally means being no more than 30 pounds heavier than is recommended for your height – and certainly do not carry over to those who fall into the category of obese.

Obesity has been declared one of the main threats to health in the US, including among children. Those considered obese, with a body mass index (BMI) of more than 30, continue to run a higher risk of death, the study says, from a variety of ailments, including numerous cancers and heart disease. It said that being underweight increases the risk of ailments not including heart disease or cancer.

The scientists at the CDC first hinted at the upside of being overweight a few years ago. Since then, however, they have expanded the base of their analysis, with data that includes mortality figures from 2004, the last year for which numbers were available, for no fewer than 2.3 million American adults.

Highlighting how a bit of bulge might help you, the scientists said that in 2004 there were 100,000 fewer deaths among the overweight in the US than would have been expected if they were all considered to be of normal weight. Put slightly differently, those Americans who were merely overweight were up to about 40 per cent less likely than normal-weight people to die from a whole range of diseases and risks including emphysema, pneumonia, Alzheimer's, injuries and various infections.

Aside from escaping diseases, tipping the scales a little further may also help people recover from serious surgery, injuries and infections, Dr Flegal suggested. Such patients may simply have deeper bodily reserves to draw on in times of medical crisis.

Not everyone in the medical profession was surprised or angry about the study. "What this tells us is the hazards have been very much exaggerated," said Steven Blair, a professor of exercise science and biostatistics at the University of South Carolina, who has long argued that the case for dietary restraint has been taken too far.

"I believe the data," added Elizabeth Barrett-Connor, a professor of family and preventive medicine at the University of California, San Diego, who believes that a BMI of 25 to 30 – roughly the the so-called overweight range – "may be optimal".

Critics, however, were quick to point out that the study was concerned with mortality data only and did not take account of the quality of life benefits of keeping your weight down. The study "is not about health and sickness", noted the obesity researcher Barry Popkin of the University of North Carolina.

The report "definitely won't be the last word", said Dr Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society, who pointed out, in a report released last week by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research, that staying slim was the main recommendation for avoiding cancer.

Others in the American medical community, while a little bemused, were withholding judgement. "This is a very puzzling disconnect," said Dr JoAnn Manson, the chief of preventive medicine at Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital.

The suggestion that a bit of extra weight may assist patients recovering from an infection or surgery was of no surprise to Dr Flegal. "You may also have more lean mass – more bone and muscle," she said. "If you are in an adverse situation, that could be good for you."

In their conclusions, the authors of the study note: "Overweight... may be associated with improved survival during recovery from adverse conditions, such as infections or medical procedures, and with improved prognosis for some diseases. Such findings may be due to greater nutritional reserves or higher lean body mass associated with overweight."

Those of us mostly likely to benefit from a little bulge beneath the belt, the study adds, are between 25 and 59 years old, although there were also some advantages for people over 60.

...which is when ketchup was declared a vegetable.

High fructose corn syrup is in almost everything. Read ingredients, cut it out of your diet, and a lot of the pronlem goes away.

It's like crack to your blood sugar levels, and ought to be banned from our food.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

Charles Darwin

The increased weight for large numbers of people is too consistent and dramatic to be the sum of individual choices. Food tasted really good 50 years ago, and yes, there were Twinkies at the snack counter. Transportation exclusively by car was well established by the 70's. I can believe some effects from the desire for bigger portions and decreased exercise, but nothing at the level we're seeing. The notion that people eat not because they're hungry but because they're just greedy is bizarre -- do you exercise when you're tired or spend the day in bed when you're restless? You go to bed when you're sleepy and eat when you're hungry. The model of hunger like the fuel gauge in your car is silly -- you need to fill up when the needle goes to empty. But hunger has a heavy chemical component, so that your stomache can be stuffed, and you can still feel hungry (personal experience here). So what's happened? Just from my reading, some possibilities:

- our food has been laced with substances that chemically unbalance the hunger mechanism. Potential culprits include high fructose and transfats, but may also include growth hormones from livestock.

- Some obesity may be caused by viruses, which act on the body either through the hunger mechanism or through metabolic issues or some combination thereof.

- hunger may be affected by widely spread and increasing changes in lifestyle, such as increased anxiety and exhaustion.

- food may have changed in ways that interact badly with the hunger mechanism (related to first issue above). Our food now has significantly less nutrients than food a generation ago. As various characteristics such as fast growth and attractive shelf appearance have been bred for, bulk has increased while density has decreased. As people who usually drink diet sodas will drink significantly more of them (interaction of full stomach and hunger noted above), we may be eating more because the emptiness of the food eventually affects hunger.

These are all hypotheses that I've gotten out of news articles on obesity over the last five to ten years. I'd like to see more research (I'm convinced by the article Tina cited that overweight is overfeared, though obesity is a problem). And yet, we continue to base our policies on obesity on harranguing individuals to eat less and exercise more, without accounting for the quite extraordinary need of people to eat when they're hungry.