It matters, according to new research:
Whether your companions are overweight or skinny and how much they put on their plates can greatly influence how much you eat. New research shows if we eat with skinny people, we tend to mimic their food portions, regardless of how much they take. However, if we eat with overweight companions, we generally try to adjust our portions to be different.
You’ve probably read about the South Carolina woman who has been charged with criminal neglect because of her 14-year-old son’s obesity. The boy, who weighs more than 550 lbs., is now in foster care.
CNN interviewed the mother’s attorneys yesterday. …
Another Wednesday, another absurdly inexpensive meal of Chef Lance Gummere’s designer sliders at the Shed on Glenwood. I notice that in my original post on Omnivore, I suggested that the $3 treats were big enough that two would fill the average diner. The last two weeks, I’ve ordered three and Wayne has had four — and not because they’ve grown any smaller in size. Addiction. …
Blogger Amy Wallas hits Varasano’s: “We tried the salumi and the white clam pizza. The salumi was tasty, with good fresh mozzarella and Italian meats. The char on the pizza gave it flavor and body as well, but to be honest… .”
Gidget, Taco Bell’s mascot, gives up the ghost at 15. …
How to make a smoothie with your feet. …
Photographer Broderick Smylie checks out the action at Noon in Midtown. I may be mistaken, but I believe Broderick hit Noon after leaving another nearby restaurant still hungry. …
Steakhead has been quiet lately but he likes Teela Taqueria in Sandy Springs.
A new study of 811 overweight, dieting people demonstrates that the type of food you eat — carbs, fats, protein — matters much less than the total calories consumed. So forget what Ornish, Atkins and the Zone say. Go ahead and eat that pasta and bacon, but make sure you get a half-order.
It’s bad enough that fat contributes to diabetes and heart disease, besides diminishing your hotness. Now, according to researchers with Kaiser Permanente, belly fat may also be a contributing factor in the development of dementia:
In the Kaiser study, researchers looked at records from patients in their 40s and 50s who had their abdominal fat measured in the 1960s and ’70s. Of the 6,583 patients studied, 15.9 percent had been diagnosed with dementia by 2006.
Among patients with the most visceral fat in middle age, the rate of dementia was 324.3 cases per 10,000; patients with the least belly fat had a rate of dementia of 214.6 cases per 10,000.
When the data was adjusted for factors that can affect dementia — including age, education, sex, and medical conditions such as stroke or heart disease — people with the most belly fat were 2.72 times more likely to develop dementia than those with the least fat.
Even thin people could be at risk if they have a large pot belly. In the study, patients who were of average weight but in the category with the most visceral fat were 89 percent more likely to develop dementia than people of average weight with little or no belly fat.
Get the whole, depressing story here.
(Image of viscerally fat, demented person from Valid Insanity.)
ITVS Community Cinema will host a preview of “King Corn,” a feature documentary written and produced by Curt Ellis, Ian Cheney, and Aaron Woolf, at the Decatur Library on Tuesday, March 25 at 7 p.m.
The film, directed by Woolf, follows Ellis and Cheney, two Yale buddies concerned about America’s obesity epidemic, on a year-long journey in a small county in rural Iowa. They rent an acre of land and grow a “bumper” crop of corn and supposedly discover that the grain is one of the main culprits behind our fast-food nation. They also raise some red flags about how we eat and how we farm.
“For the first time in American history, our generation was at risk of having a shorter lifespan than our parents. And it was because of what we ate.â€
—Curt Ellis, filmmaker
www.pbs.org/independentlens/kingcorn
“King Corn” will premiere as part of the sixth season of the PBS television series “Independent Lens” on Tuesday, April 15, at 10 p.m. Check out a promotional clip of the film here.
Jodi Lipper and Cerena Vincent, author of How to Eat Like a Hot Chick, blog on the Huffington Post now and then. Their most recent entry is titled “Don’t Eat At The Mall: What To Avoid When You Return Your Gifts.”
They name five food vendors to avoid. Topping the calorific list is Cinnabon:
These things have 800 calories each, which is by far more calories than you should consume in a typical meal, not to mention a snack. We know they smell like delicious cinnamon heaven, but so do those obnoxious candles they sell in makeshift carts in the middle of the mall, and those are fat-free. One more reason to never eat Cinnabon – they are beyond messy, sticky and gooey. The frosting has the consistency of glue, and that is the last thing you need all over your hands before you go try on clothes. Save the sticky fingers for another time.
Check out the full list here.
By the way, How to Eat Like a Hot Chick should not be confused with the vegan diet book, Skinny Bitch. The authors of that book have published a best-sellling cookbook sequel, Skinny Bitch in the Kitch, subject of a recent article in the New York Times. An excerpt:
“Skinny Bitch in the Kitch†helpfully condenses the entire content of the first book down to three pages (meat is murder; carbohydrates do not make you fat; always read the ingredients and don’t eat anything you can’t pronounce). The first book barely mentioned cooking, suggesting an eating style based on fruit, snacks and frozen food from the health-food store. It was a vegan version of the fast-food diet the authors say they used to follow equally zealously.
“I know I ate at Burger King every single day of 1992,†Ms. Freedman said. “For years, if it didn’t come from a drive-through or a can, I wasn’t interested.â€
Read the complete story of going from Burger King junkie to vegan animal rights activist here.
The New York Times reports a possible link between proximity of fast-food restaurants to schools and obesity. Among the studies mentioned is one of Atlanta schools.
Says the Times of a new national study:
The study, published in the January issue of Health & Place, found that more than one-third of middle and high schools are located within a half-mile of a fast-food outlet or convenience store. When the study focused on the 20 largest cities, the presence of fast-food chains near schools was even more obvious. Two-thirds of urban secondary schools had at least one fast-food restaurant within walking distance, and more than half had a convenience store within a half-mile.
While previous studies have looked at the proximity of fast-food restaurants to schools in a specific community, no previous study has examined the trend across the United States. A 2005 Chicago study found that 78 percent of all kindergarten, primary and secondary schools had at least one fast-food restaurant within a half-mile, and that fast-food restaurants were clustered disproportionately around schools compared to other parts of the city. A 2007 study of four communities in Atlanta also showed that fast-food restaurants and convenience stores were closer to middle schools compared with the location of sit-down restaurants and grocery stores.
The most recent study is important because it shows that efforts to fight obesity and encourage healthful eating inside school cafeterias is likely undermined by the easy availability of fast food within walking distance of many schools. …
I dunno. The idea, proposed by some, that you can control students’ weight by not letting them leave the campus for lunch is a bit of draconian optimism I don’t think I buy. Maybe the cities can start creating “obesity districts,” the way some European cities have “red light districts.” Instead of buying sex, you could buy McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, etc.
Men’s Health magazine has named the worst food in America in a recent article titled “The 20 Worst Foods in America.” The article looks at the unhealthiest meals available at chain restaurants, rating them by calorie count and fat content. Once you start to get to the part where it says, “Downing this ‘personal’ pizza is equivalent to eating 18 slices of Domino’s Crunchy Thin Crust cheese pizza,” you begin to see the sheer masochism of eating this crap.
Anyway, the winner is … Outback Steakhouse Aussie Cheese Fries with Ranch Dressing!! According to the article, the appetizer has 2,900 calories, 182 grams of fat and 240 grams of carbs.
For the record, I would like to say that they don’t really have ranch dressing in Australia. Nor do they swear about their onions. Nor do they barbecue shrimp regularly. But that’s for another post …
A couple of new studies may help explain why:
In this land and season of plenty, low-income and rural Americans continue to have difficulty finding healthy foods that are affordable, a new study finds.
One study shows that low-income Americans now would have to spend up to 70 percent of their food budget on fruits and vegetables to meet new national dietary guidelines for healthy eating.
And a second study found that in rural areas, convenience stores far outnumber supermarkets and grocery stores — even though the latter carry a much wider choice of affordable, healthy foods.
Read the whole story on Yahoo news here.
Sometimes, those “healthy” choices on the menu seem a little too good to be true. The menu says you’re getting X tiny number of calories and you waddle out of the restaurant feeling quite sated, perhaps congratulating yourself for your remarkable self-restraint.
Of course it could be that the restaurant misrepresented the number of calories it actually served you. That’s exactly what a recent study by the Center for Science in the Public Interest found, according to the New York Times‘ health blog, Well:
C.S.P.I. sent several dishes served by the chain Olive Garden to a laboratory for nutritional analysis. Although the restaurant doesn’t provide calorie information for most of their foods, three of the items came from the restaurant’s Garden Fare menu, which includes calorie counts.
For two out of three dishes, the restaurant servings exceeded the calorie content promised on the menu. A dish of Linguine alla Marinara, for instance, was supposed to have just 551 calories, according to the Olive Garden Web site. But the C.S.P.I. analysis showed it contained 790 calories, or 43 percent more calories than listed on the menu. A dish of Capellini Pomodoro is listed at 644 calories on the menu, but the restaurant served up 990 calories worth, or 53 percent more. However, the portion of Shrimp Primavera was just about right. The menu promised 706 calories, and the server dished up 690 calories, a difference of just 2 percent.
Check out the full story here.
The same blog recently featured a piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association that calls for reduced use of salt because of sodium’s link to high blood pressure:
Sodium has long been associated with an increased risk for high blood pressure. Notably, the World Health Organization earlier this year said the evidence linking sodium to hypertension is “conclusive.†Cutting American’s sodium intake in half … could reduce deaths from heart disease and stroke by 23 percent. By some estimates, that could prevent 150,000 deaths every year.
But leave it to the Salt Institute to play the same role the tobacco companies assumed when smoking was linked to cancer. Or compare its reaction to the junk-food industry’s response to reports a good 20 years ago that trans fats were poisonous. Reports the Times:
Yet the Salt Institute, an industry trade group, disagrees, saying there’s no evidence to support a campaign against sodium. In fact, some people are more sensitive to the deleterious effects of sodium than others. Unfortunately, there’s no real way to figure out if you’re one of them.
And evolution is just a theory, global warming is a paranoid fantasy of Al Gore, and Elvis is eating peanut butter, bacon and hummus sandwiches with Saddam Hussein in an underground bunker in Iran.
Michael Pollan, undoubtedly America’s best writer about food politics, had a mind-blowing column in the Nov. 4 New York Times about the way our bloated farm subsidy programs add to the children’s obesity epidemic and other health problems by supporting poor nutrition:
Americans have begun to ask why the farm bill is subsidizing high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils at a time when rates of diabetes and obesity among children are soaring, or why the farm bill is underwriting factory farming (with subsidized grain) when feedlot wastes are polluting the countryside and, all too often, the meat supply. For the first time, the public health community has raised its voice in support of overturning farm policies that subsidize precisely the wrong kind of calories (added fat and added sugar), helping to make Twinkies cheaper than carrots and Coca-Cola competitive with water. Also for the first time, the international development community has weighed in on the debate, arguing that subsidized American exports are hobbling cotton farmers in Nigeria and corn farmers in Mexico.
As Pollan documents, the farm lobby simply buys off its critics by adding marginal programs to support healthy nutrition. Read the whole column here.
Check out this amazing animated map from CNN. It tracks the skyrocketing increase in obesity in the United States over the last 20 years. Hey, we Georgians didn’t get super-fat until last year:
Yet more words on cupcakes appeared recently in the New York Times. It seems that the Cupcake Renaissance is also the Cupcake Problem:
As we know, cupcakes have had a whopping resurgence: they are retro-food chic, the thing to eat for people in the know.
But cupcakes have also recently been marched to the front lines of the fat wars, banned from a growing number of classroom birthday parties because of their sugar, fat and “empty calories,†a poster food of the child obesity crisis. This was clear when children returned to school this month to a tightening of regulations, federal and state, on what can be served up between the bells.
And it has led some to wonder whether emotional value, on occasion, might legitimately outweigh nutritional value.
Schools trying to bring parents to the table in efforts to root out fat and sugar have faced what Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York University who strongly supports limiting sweets in schools, calls “the cupcake problem.â€
When included on lists of treats that parents are discouraged or forbidden to send to school — and when those policies are, say, put to a vote at the P.T.A. — “cupcakes are deal breakers,†Professor Nestle said. “It sounds like a joke, but it’s a very serious problem on a number of levels. You have to control it.â€
Read the whole story here.
USA Today also printed a (less alarmist) piece on cupcakes recently. Check it out here.
(Photo of Mr. Met with cupcakes from “What about the plastic animals?”)
Low carbs, high protein? High carbs, low protein? The controversy continues to rage about which is the healthier diet. Now, Michael R. Eades, author of Protein Power, has reached back 3,500 years to argue that a high-carb diet is unhealthy.
The proof, he writes, is in the obese mummy of Queen Hatshepsut, long lost but positively identified last month. The queen, like most ancient Egyptians, ate a very high-carb diet. Writes Eades:
Were the nutritionists of today right about their ideas of the ideal diet, the ancient Egyptians should have had abundant health. But they didn’t. In fact, they suffered pretty miserable health. Many had heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity – all the same disorders that we experience today in the ‘civilized’ Western world. Diseases that Paleolithic man, our really ancient ancestors, appeared to escape.
According to the New York Times, Hatshepsut’s mummy is that of an obese, diabetic 50 year old woman with bad teeth. All the conditions that nutritionists today would have us believe would be prevented by Hatshepsut’s diet. It certainly didn’t work for her. And she is not a special case – most Egyptian mummies show the same disorders, especially the bad teeth. The skeletal remains of Paleolithic man, who consumed a meat-based diet, showed strong, perfect teeth. Bad teeth are the hallmark of carbohydrate consumption.
Read the entire blog piece by Eades here. (Photo from the People’s Daily Online.)
I stopped by Alon’s (1394 N. Highland Ave., 404-872-6000) today to buy my favorite antidepressants, the chocolate-chocolate-chunk cookies, and noted this message on the blackboard behind the pastry counter.
An apple used to be adequate to bribe teachers. Now they require a whole apple pie or a basket full of zillion dollar cookies? No wonder America’s children are growing obese. They think pastry is the medium by which success is purchased.
This is a scandal!
If you saw The Secret, the New Agey movie that Oprah raves about, you probably recall one piece of advice in it that detractors always cite: If you don’t want to be fat, don’t look at fat people.
Well, according to an article in the New York Times, that may have more than a grain of truth to it:
Obesity can spread from person to person, much like a virus, researchers are reporting today. When one person gains weight, close friends tend to gain weight, too.
Their study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, involved a detailed analysis of a large social network of 12,067 people who had been closely followed for 32 years, from 1971 to 2003.
The investigators knew who was friends with whom as well as who was a spouse or sibling or neighbor, and they knew how much each person weighed at various times over three decades. That let them reconstruct what happened over the years as individuals became obese. Did their friends also become obese? Did family members? Or neighbors?
The answer, the researchers report, was that people were most likely to become obese when a friend became obese. That increased a person’s chances of becoming obese by 57 percent. There was no effect when a neighbor gained or lost weight, however, and family members had less influence than friends.
¿Quién es más macho gordo? Los Estadounidenses son más gordos.
