Harvard Scientists: Obesity Rate Will Reach 42 Percent

I don’t really know how to parse this news, so I’m just going to post the article.  This is so frightening.  And sad.

ScienceDaily (Nov. 4, 2010) — Researchers at Harvard University say America’s obesity epidemic won’t plateau until at least 42 percent of adults are obese, an estimate derived by applying mathematical modeling to 40 years of Framingham Heart Study data.

Their work, published this week in the journal PLoS Computational Biology, runs counter to recent assertions by some experts that the obesity rate, which has been at 34 percent for the past five years, may have peaked. An additional 34 percent of American adults are overweight but not obese, according to the federal government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Harvard scientists say that their modeling shows that the proliferation of obesity among American adults in recent decades owes in large part to its accelerating spread via social networks.

“Our analysis suggests that while people have gotten better at gaining weight since 1971, they haven’t gotten any better at losing weight,” says lead author Alison L. Hill, a graduate student in Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Biophysics Program, and at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. “Specifically, the rate of weight gain due to social transmission has grown quite rapidly.”

The Lunch Dilemma

Forgive me Blog, for I have Sinned.

Tupperware. Not getting filled.

Sigh.  Well, it’s time for a confessional.  Um… here goes: In the last few weeks I’ve been eating while standing, eating on the subway, and eating during class.  I’ve been scarfing down hastily-purchased sandwiches while I try to decipher Biostatistics problems and Health Policy readings.  I’ve been abusing coffee and drinking diet soda (I know better, trust me. I know).  I’ve been running around the city whilst eagerly-albeit-naively purchased produce rots away in my refrigerator.

This is not OK, people!  This is precisely the type of relationship with food that I am trying to work against.  We need to make time for food, to eat it with friends and with people, and to appreciate the values (health, social, psychological, etc. etc.) that it brings us.

Nutrition Conference Fail

What do Europe’s top public health experts eat at a conference on nutrition and obesity prevention?  If you’re picturing apple slices and carrot sticks, or (since we’re in Spain) a Spanish potato omelet, you’d be wrong. Dead wrong.

Snacks at Spain’s NAOS Conference on Obesity Prevention

I spent yesterday morning at Spain’s Ministry of Health for it’s annual Strategy for Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity Prevention (NAOS) Conference, a gathering of public health experts from Europe and around the world who discuss issues related to obesity prevention.  NAOS is kind of the Spanish equivalent of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign (their slogan is “Eat Healthy and Move”) although it has been in place since 2005.

This year, the NAOS conference focused on how to curb marketing of junk food — now known as HFSS, for High Fat, Salt and Sugar — products to kids.  The morning’s distinguished speakers included a panel of public health experts from Spain, France, Norway, Portugal, and the U.K.,  as well as the head of obesity prevention at the World Health Organization.

The issues were interesting and I’m happy I went.  But something left me with a very bad taste in my mouth.  So I’m not even going to talk about the conference here — I’m going to talk about the coffee break.

This is a Twinkie

Photo:  Hostess Twinkie: 37 Or So Ingredients by Dwight Eschliman

An astute reader has pointed out that though I make many mentions of processed food in this blog — with reference to how it should be avoided — I have yet to define what exactly I think falls into that category.  I plan on doing that very soon, but for the time being I’d just like to point you to this genius visual depiction of the ingredients in a Twinkie by photographer Dwight Eschliman.

The Twinkie (for those who don’t know) is the “Golden Sponge Cake with Creamy Filling” — in Hostess-brand marketing lingo — which has become the icon for highly processed food.  I like to use Pollan’s term, “edible food-like substances” because it highlights the fact that something like a Twinkie can hardly really be called FOOD.

Here are the ingredients of a Twinkie.  How many of these can you recognize or picture in your mind?  Not very many?  That is a processed food.

Cheap Food is Expensive

It’s not our fruits and vegetables that get the major subsidies

I strongly suggest checking out Tom Laskawy’s post today over at Mark Bittman’s blog, where he points out the way simplistic economic portrayals of our food costs conceal the high price we pay for cheap food.

He especially takes issue (and I agree with him) with the following quote from an NPR interview with Agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack:

“I would say consumers do benefit from the way in which we structured our farm programs, at least as of today, because of the fact that our food is less expensive than it is any place else in the world. Folks in America have a great deal more discretion of what to do with their paycheck.”

While it’s true that food is “less expensive” in the U.S. — Americans spend less of their income on food than any other country — it conceals the truth of why and what kind of food is so much less expensive.  Namely, it’s the highly processed (mostly corn- and soy-based) packaged foods, which are also the least healthy.  And why are they cheap?  Because our government pours huge subsidies into these crops, encouraging industrial farms to overproduce, which artificially depresses the price.

Jim Gaffigan: Hot Pockets

This hilarious comedy skit does a great job of illustrating the horrors of processed food and the marketing schemes that convince us to consume it:

Jim Gaffigan.com

The Feminist Mistake

Anti-cooking feminists have it all wrong

Let's take back the wooden spoon. Women and men both.

So I was working on a post about author/food policy advocate/personal guru Michael Pollan’s recent article on food movements in the New York Review of Books, a really nice summary on the macro and micro origins of our food problems and the diverse movements that are attempting to address them.  (While you’re waiting for your copy of the Omnivore’s Dilemma, check it out).

But while I was drafting my thoughts on Pollan’s piece, a crazy and furious storm began brewing among feminists who take issue with the following:

Commenting on Janet A. Flammang’s new book  The Taste of Civilization: Food, Politics, and Civil Society, Pollan writes:

“In a challenge to second-wave feminists who urged women to get out of the kitchen, Flammang suggests that by denigrating “foodwork” — everything involved in putting meals on the family table — we have unthinkingly wrecked one of the nurseries of democracy: the family meal.”

This has caused outrage among feminists who take this to mean that Pollan wants to turn back the clock and send women back into the proverbial kitchen as opposed to encouraging us all (women and men both) to find our way to the physical one.

Nutella wants to join the dessert-for-breakfast game

My friend and Bunsofsteal fitness blogger Julia Neyman points out the tragically manipulative marketing techniques used to encourage parents to serve Nutella to their children for breakfast:

I was changing in the Reebok Sports Club locker room the other afternoon, absentmindedly listening to the TV in the background, when this sentence snapped me out of my daydreams: ”As a mom, I’m a great believer in Nutella…”

So began a 30 second spot, in which Nutella attempted to sell the message that chocolate hazelnut spread is a healthy snack for kids: ”Moms, Nutella is a healthy snack for your kids! Spread it on multigrain bread, and they’ll love it!” Really? Nutella? The Nutella that contains 200 calories, and 11 grams of fat, per a 2 tbsp serving?