Category — In The Media

Interesting New York Times article about obese people and their role in the health care debate. Hard to know what to think about this one. Should they pay a higher rate on their premiums? No?

A study funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on the New York City law requiring chain restaurants to include calorie counts on menu labels has delivered its first set of results. It would seem that the number of calories consumed/purchased has not decreased among lower-income residents.

Nearly 28 percent of purchasers reported seeing the calorie labeling information, and almost 90 percent of this group reported that they purchased fewer calories as a result. However, the researchers found that the number of calories purchased in New York City actually increased slightly, from a mean of 825 calories to 846 calories. The authors concluded that calorie labeling increased the percentage of consumers from lower-income, minority communities who reported seeing calorie labels, and subsequently the number of consumers who reported that the information influenced their food choices.

My guess is that this New York City law that requires calorie counts to appear next to menu items largely helps those that are already focused on dieting and losing weight, while those that are not dieting and perhaps don’t care so much about the number of calories in their meals simply ignore or are not even aware of the information they are looking at.

However the law needs more time to evolve and create a greater awareness before any study has results that are truly helpful and realistic, as this study may have started too soon after the initial implementation of the law.

Via Marc Ambinder.

New York City recently instituted a program requiring restaurants to include calorie counts in food menus for all public restaurants. Now a study has been released apparently with some results to show for it. While I think it’s too early to announce a verdict on whether the program is a success or not based on the available data up to this point (the program started on July 19, 2008), McArdle takes a dive anyway.

But while a study like this certainly can’t disprove the effectiveness of calorie labeling, what remains is that we don’t have much evidence to indicate that it works. It’s not that it was a bad idea. But lots of good ideas don’t pan out in the real world.

I particularlly enjoyed this comment by McArdle:

People may have mentally credited themselves with a savings on one item, and allowed themselves an indulgence in another: “I orderd a single instead of a double or triple, so I get large fries and a frosty!” They might just be bad at math. Or they might have wanted to look good for the interviewer, which is always a risk in these sorts of surveys. But the receipts don’t lie.

Every dieter’s worst habit.

(Via The Atlantic Magazine)

Update:

Update:
Ezra Klein gives his two cents worth on the subject.

Ta-Nehisi Coates in his Atlantic Magazine blog quotes from Ezra Klein on obesity’s role in poverty and how they are intertwined and influence each other.

Klein says:

Obesity is bad, but it may be just one of many bad things. Overdue bills. A horrible part-time job. Endless commuting time on the bus. A mother with diabetes. A child running with the wrong crowd. A leaking roof. In that scenario, slowly reversing your weight gain might be a good idea, but it hardly makes a dent in the overall crumminess of the conditions. It won’t replace pain with pleasure. So you do things that are surer to replace pain with pleasure, like have a delicious, filling, satisfying, salty, fatty meal. That may make your overall situation more unpleasant, but then, making that situation pleasant didn’t seem like an option in the first place.”

And Coates comments:

It’s a lot easier to drop that 30 when everything else is going well, as opposed to when you’re worried about the kid’s school, your ability to make rent, and the fools on the corner.

Unfortunately, this is probably all true.

(Via The Atlantic Magazine.)

Interesting post today from The Design Observer Group showing a nutritional chart from 70 years ago. While the tone of the post suggests that the chart is out-of-date and no longer mainstream dietary thinking, I think the chart is closer to today’s nutritional beliefs than it would appear. While the list of myths in the article are largely true, the chart itself is not that far off the mark:

By zooming into the image, one can glean the following text:

“The heat given off by food is used in maintaining the body temperature and supplying energy to the muscles. For this work the average daily requirement is around 3,000 Calories, and then since a pound of butter will produce 3,600 Calories, any one of the food quantities shown in this chart would more than supply all the daily heat and energy needs of most people. The quantities, however, are only approximate and will vary according to the weight and fat content of the particular …, chop, cantaloupe, or bunch of celery, etc, you may happy to buy. The amount of fat in food is what largely … in heating power, since, when burned in the body, one gram of fat will produce more than twice as much heat (3.3 Calories) as one gram of either protein or carbohydrate (??? Calories). Today Calories are considered a crude guide to diet simply because the heating power of food often has little to do with its nourishing power.”

Read The Design Observer Group post here.

There’s a good article from CNN Health today for those that tend to binge on fatty foods, don’t get enough sleep and suffer from high amounts of stress. As I have written about before, as much as I stick to my routine of whatever calorie limit I have set for myself, it can be all too easy to cave into the temptation of a wonderful aroma or delicious looking food. In my experience, if my journal shows that I am well under my limit for the week, I allow myself to splurge a little bit and go over that daily limit, since at the end of the week I’ll still be under the overall limit. But it’s how I splurge is what is important. While I sometimes allow myself a hamburger and some fries, it’s important to constantly be aware of how I decide what to eat.

For example, if my co-workers decide to go to a burger joint for lunch, I obviously want to go along. My mind then begins to race on what I should order while I am there. A quick review of the actual ingredients is my first order of business, which usually includes a patty, hamburger bun, cheese, pickles, tomatoes, onions, lettuce and maybe some bacon. Taking out bacon and cheese from the order will reduce the calorie intake of that hamburger by up 130 calories, since bacon (50-60 calories) and cheese (60-70 calories) are very fatty foods, especially based on their actual physical size. The other large number of calories in that hamburger is the hamburger bun itself (around 120 calories). But what is a hamburger without the bun, and you certainly don’t want to make a scene eating a hamburger with a fork and knife and no bun. As long as you keep the raw vegetables for the rest of your hamburger, it’s not such a bad lunch. Hold off ordering the basket of fries and make do stealing a few from your co-workers and you’ll do just fine. Perhaps go for a walk after you get back to the office to burn off a few more calories to even out a little bit more. If you do all of that, you’ll feel that you dodged a bullet a little while still being able to hang out with your co-workers, if you like them, that is.

Some good tips for those who are looking for redemption after a calorie orgy:

Forgive yourself. “Having one overindulgent meal should not derail you from your healthful eating habits, while being too negative will make you more likely to throw up your hands in despair and overindulge at the next meal or several meals for days to come,” Elisa Zied, R.D., says.

Give yourself a do-over. Immediately start with lean protein, veggies, whole grains, and fruit, and drink plenty of water, Zied suggests.

Learn from it. Think about what triggered your overindulgence–not to punish yourself, but to choose smarter next time. “If you keep a food journal, you might see you ended up pigging out because you waited too long to eat,” Keri Gans, R.D., says.

Add on exercise. To feel in control again, simply tack on a few extra minutes to your regular walk, gym routine, etc. At the same time, “try not to think of exercise as a punishment for overindulging,” Zied says. If you do, you’ll grow to dread the gym

You can read the entire article here.

I’ve been reading an interesting article in the New York Times Magazine this week titled “Are Your Friends Making You Fat?” It’s about a study on social relationships possibly serving as a contagion for various social behaviors such as smoking, drinking, happiness, depression and gaining or losing weight, just to name a few of the behaviors. One would think and assume that immediate friends and family have a direct impact on your behavior as well as you affecting theirs. But according to this study even friends of friends that you may not even know can be affected by your behavior as well.

In my situation, I wonder how my weight loss has affected those around me within the one to three degrees of separation that the study researches. I know that my older brother’s weight loss has had an impact on me as well as my younger brother’s weight problems weighing on me as I’ve seen him suffer some of its consequences over time. But I wonder if my weight loss has caused others to reevaluate their own situation. I can say that in my own work experience, the weight loss has been noticed and greatly admired by all those in my office. But I can’t say that it has exactly spurred those same people into action to want to do the same for themselves, even though they professed to want to do so. That would suggest to me that human will is the sole factor in embarking on such endeavors than simply watching the results of a co-worker’s weight loss in real time as I came into the office every day. I have no idea how their friends have reacted, because they may not have even said anything to them about it, or if they have, I’m sure it was in quick passing.

… co-workers did not seem to transmit happiness to one another, while personal friends did. But co-workers did transmit smoking habits; if a person at a small firm stopped smoking, his or her colleagues had a 34 percent better chance of quitting themselves. The difference is based in the nature of workplace relationships, Fowler contends. Smokers at work tend to cluster together outside the building; if one of them stops smoking, it reduces the conviviality of the experience. (If you’re the last smoker outside on a freezing afternoon, your behavior can seem completely ridiculous even to yourself.) But when it comes to happiness, Fowler said, “people are both cooperative and competitive at work. So when one person gets a raise, it might make him happy, but it’ll make other people jealous.”

I suppose then that if I were to ever fall off the wagon, I should expect larger and larger co-workers since negativity has a far greater effect than those that are positive.

Read the entire article at the New York Times.

Interesting bit of news out today on a study on the relationship between aerobic exercise and our ability to become smarter or at least think faster. Of course the results are not conclusive, but other studies have been done apart from the one mentioned in this article to at least suggest a connection between the two.

Other recent studies provide some preliminary answers. In an experiment published in the journal of the American College of Sports Medicine, 21 students at the University of Illinois were asked to memorize a string of letters and then pick them out from a list flashed at them. Then they were asked to do one of three things for 30 minutes — sit quietly, run on a treadmill or lift weights — before performing the letter test again. After an additional 30-minute cool down, they were tested once more. On subsequent days, the students returned to try the other two options. The students were noticeably quicker and more accurate on the retest after they ran compared with the other two options, and they continued to perform better when tested after the cool down. “There seems to be something different about aerobic exercise,” Charles Hillman, an associate professor in the department of kinesiology at the University of Illinois and an author of the study, says.

Similarly, in other work by scientists at the University of Illinois, elderly people were assigned a six-month program of either stretching exercises or brisk walking. The stretchers increased their flexibility but did not improve on tests of cognition. The brisk walkers did.

Read more here.

Swedish researchers recently conducted a study that suggests eating more chocolate increases the survival rate of those who suffer heart attacks. The study wasn’t the most scientific, and it seems that most of the subjects were living in Sweden, which is hardly a reliable result for people everywhere. But since I’m Swedish and I like chocolate, this news certainly stuck out for me. The national chocolate of Sweden is Marabou which produces milk chocolate much more than it does dark chocolate, at least based on my visits there and the chocolate that I see on sale here in this country. And since dark chocolate is much healthier than milk chocolate, I would think that some other force is at work here than making the blanket suggestion that eating chocolate will reduce your chances of dying from a heart attack.

“…scientists followed 1,169 nondiabetic men and women who had been hospitalized for a first heart attack. Each filled out a standardized health questionnaire that included a question about chocolate consumption over the past 12 months. Chocolate contains flavonoid antioxidants that are widely believed to have beneficial cardiovascular effects.

The patients had a health examination three months after their discharge from the hospital, and researchers followed them for the next eight years using Swedish national registries of hospitalizations and deaths. After controlling for age, sex, obesity, physical inactivity, smoking, education and other factors, they found that the more chocolate people consumed, the more likely they were to survive.”

In my ideal world, this would be true all the time.

Read more about the study.