How are the knees?

If you're a boomer, planning to vote Obama, AND you are overweight or have some arthritis in the joints, you might want to peruse JAMA Sept. 26, 2012 (a lot of pulbic libraries offer this journal) for the articles about total knee replacements, outcomes, do-overs and costs. It's a $9 billion/year cost, and most patients are on Medicare. I suspect after reading through these articles the TKA will soon be KO'd and you'll just have to live with the pain. If your knees hurt when you're in the voting booth, perhaps they're telling you something? You'll need a subscription to read the entire article, but here is the abstract.

Surprise! Obamacare costs have ballooned

"Today, the CBO released new projections from 2013 extending through 2022, and the results are as critics expected: the ten-year cost of the law's core provisions to expand health insurance coverage has now ballooned to $1.76 trillion. That's because we now have estimates for Obamacare's first nine years of full implementation, rather than the mere six when it was signed into law. Only next year will we get a true ten-year cost estimate, if the law isn't overturned by the Supreme Court or repealed by then. Given that in 2022, the last year available, the gross cost of the coverage expansions are $265 billion, we're likely looking at about $2 trillion over the first decade, or more than double what Obama advertised." Read more

How Slim Jim stays that way

Usually I don't ask people about their weight, but I was reading a review of "Economic Aspects of Obesity" (U. of Chicago, 2011), and guess what? It's just not our fault--it's a result of the "food environment." Since the doctors, nutritionists and social scientists couldn't solve the problem, the economists are piling on looking at food prices, wages, urban planning, geography, etc. Cha-ching--more gov't money for research and behavior modification.

So when Jim stopped at my table to say hello, I asked him how he stays so trim (no belly at all--flat as a teen-age athlete). He seemed a bit surprised because nowadays he only does 100 sit ups and 150 leg raises, so he's not feeling too trim. I was afraid to ask if that was daily or weekly.

I think it might be good for these researchers to graph the weight increase, especially of the low income, since the launch of the 1964 Food Stamp Act back in the days when hunger was a problem, or at the modern women's movement begun in the early 1970s when women flooded the labor force at the urging of the feminists and started the massive growth in the restaurant industry. I'm just saying. . . there's more than one way to hug and chalk.

Anti-Obesity Programs Fail

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Tuesday the nation’s least-fat state, Colorado, has joined the other 49 states with an obesity rate of at least 20 percent.

Washington’s response to its decades of failures with anti-obesity programs is the creation of another program campaign.

Anti-Obesity Programs Fail | Obesity Statistics | First Lady | The Daily Caller

Taking fat children away from their parents--what will they think of next?

I haven't seen the July 13 issue of JAMA yet, but it contains an opinion piece that suggests obese children might need to be removed from their parents' home. Yes, and that's because the state has done such a wonderful job in those areas already assigned to it.

Jonathon Bean, who I believe teaches at Ohio State, writes: "Disclosure: I was a “super-obese” teenager at 320 lbs. My brothers were normal weight. My parents urged me to limit my diet but I ate secretly. Then, on my own, I lost 140 lbs in a single year and have kept if off for 28 years (I’m 10 lb over my 21 year old weight). That was my decision. Imagine if the know-it-alls in DCFS had put me in foster care, supervised by my new rotating parents and caring social workers. Yes, children, this is our Brave New World fast in the making."

JAMA: State Should Seize Fat Children from Parents | The Beacon

Bean says this is how the left always works: propose something really outlandish, so that when you try something less, it seems moderate. It's worked on other issues, and he lists them in the Beacon article.

I think social workers and academics are panicking because childhood obesity has leveled off in the last decade, and they fear a funding source might be drying up. Maybe you should write the author and give him a piece of your mind. Sounds like he needs it. David S. Ludwig, MD, PhD, Children's Hospital, 300 Longwood Ave, Boston, MA 02115. (david.ludwig@childrens.harvard.edu).

Ready-to-eat meat contains few cancerous compounds

If given the choice between eating a hot dog or enjoying some rotisserie chicken, consider the hot dog. That’s because hot dogs, as well as pepperoni and deli meats, are relatively free of carcinogenic compounds, according to Kansas State University research. But it’s a not-so-happy ending for bacon and rotisserie chicken — especially chicken skin — because both have higher levels of cancerous material. Smith’s research was supported by the Cooperative State Research Education and Extension Service with the USDA, the American Meat Institute Foundation and the National Pork Board Checkoff. It all has to do with the heat used for cooking and grilling, and some prepared and deli meats don't require much.

Ready-to-eat meat contains few cancerous compounds | Science Blog

$4.5 million grant creates program to train scholars in child obesity prevention

Is this the best use of obesity money--another academic program rather than pure research?

Do you need a PhD to learn that most obesity plans should be "eat less move more;" and for those that are metabolic, even many of those respond to increasing the metabolism through exercise. Do you need a PhD to discover that over regulation and unions have driven many supermarkets from the cities creating "food deserts?"  What next? Gastric by-pass surgery on 10 year olds?  What have they been doing at Illinois with all those nutrition, child care, and family study programs in place for years? Children have gotten heavier as women have entered (or been pushed into) the work force and started the restaurant route for feeding their families.  You can chart it beginning in 1970.

A five-year $4.5 million USDA grant to University of Illinois researchers will establish the Illinois Transdisciplinary Obesity Prevention Program (I-TOPP), an innovative research-based program that will combine a Ph.D. with a master's in public health (MPH) degree focused on child obesity prevention.

$4.5 million grant creates program to train scholars in child obesity prevention

Ohio State University also got part of a $4.5 million grant, but it is for the study of rural children and will focus on 2 communities and is shared with 24 other universities.

OSU Extension's Family and Consumer Sciences program will receive $745,744 for the five-year project, which is being led by Kansas State University and involves an additional five states (Indiana, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin).

The Childhood Obesity Prevention Grant was one of 24 funded at the end of April by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The goal of this project is to find ways to help rural communities create a culture of healthy eating and physical activity to prevent childhood obesity in low-income young children, said Karen Bruns, assistant director of OSU Extension in charge of Extension's Family and Consumer Sciences programs. Bruns will serve as Ohio's principal investigator on the project.

Ohio Involved in Project Targeting Childhood Obesity — Ohio State University Extension

And what about all the childhood obesity prevention programs, state and federal, church and non-profit, of the past, many listed in the 2004 guide to financing them? Financing Childhood Obesity Prevention Programs: Federal Funding Sources and Other Strategies   Read through some of these programs--one was $999 million.  Where is the accountability?  Where are the children now at a normal healthy weight as a result of the nanny state?

If you search "grant obesity in children" in Google, you get about 8 million hits.

And did you know about BMI Surveillance: Another Flabby Idea